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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Whizbang Dustyboots" data-source="post: 3202553" data-attributes="member: 11760">Then read it:They are NOT compelled to give full and complete answers about stuff that the god doesn't think is important.You're projecting a whole lot onto the game system, or are interpreting setting-specific information to be generally required. Anthropomorphic superhero deities are not a required element of a campaign setting and I don't think they even really exist outside of a few settings at all.And yet there still were religious battles between sects all the time. A god might call down "hey, build a boat, man," but that's a far cry from the level of detail that you were suggesting earlier. If a cleric then busted out a Commune to ask "hey, can you be more specific about the sort of boat you're looking for," there's no requirement for a god to do anything more. In fact, in the campaigns I've been in, the answer would be stony silence on a good day and a rebuke otherwise. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f615.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":confused:" title="Confused    :confused:"  data-smilie="5"data-shortname=":confused:" /> So I guess I'm imagining all the Christian on Christian violence throughout history and the Muslim on Muslim violence today? Islam was started by an emissary dictating out the Koran word for word, yet there's still strife over doctrine and other elements.Your view of how religions work is really at odds with everything I've seen in history.She answered in metaphor.Your counter-examples all work in a way very different from what you're trying to argue.Really? Where do the rules talk about godly behavior? There are examples of how some gods behave in Deities & Demigods and various settings, but that's a far cry from "rules.""What is the cause of this plague?" "Where can we go to get food to keep the people from starving during this famine?" "Someone in the church knifed the pope. Who was it?"Clerics are not Time-Life operators standing by. That spell slot shouldn't be used on Commune at all if they aren't going to be actively furthering the needs of the faith. Asking whether it's required to genuflect at the end of a pew doesn't rise to meet that standard and any cleric with with lack of wisdom to ask it should have the spell yanked away from them.Then stop insisting that the gods will give clear answers about inane fiddly points of theological trivia.Stop with the strawmen."I've got better things to do than to mediate your squabble with Cardinal Flingflang. The army of Orcus is waging a crusade over the next mountain range and there's agents inside the church trying to pervert our worshippers to his cause. Your next question better be related to rooting out traitors in the church or helping out with the war effort or you're going to be cleaning all of the statues in the cathedral with your toothbrush.""He's evil and looking at me funny" is central to the mission of an idiotic paladin at best.If someone's caught committing an evil act, the paladin acts, period. Having to ask if that's OK is nonsensical, although I guess I'm starting to see why people don't want to play paladins, if this kind of thing is typical.And that a character guided by faith would have to phone Dial A God to figure this out really undercuts the notion of faith itself.Non-spellcasting experts can handle reading the holy books and praying at funerals and weddings just fine. When a god grants a mortal the ability to raise the dead or turn into a combat machine, it's not so they can sit around, eating bonbons and discussing how many angels will fit on the head of a pin.No, they were the id writ large, charging around, humping women while shapechanged into swans, getting drunk and harassing their spouse's children from previous relationships and so on. The gods did not come down and say "OK, let's have a town hall meeting so we can discuss every last flippin' element of your life." Hera was not Oprah. Mortals had to figure this stuff out on their own because the gods gave broad strokes answers and were off to go hang portraits of each other in the stars and so on.Right back at you. The gods came down and ... didn't break things down into detail. They've NEVER said anything with exacting detail except when it's a very narrow topic. They certainly never address sweeping issues of faith in detail. The best you'll get there are 10 short sentences written on slabs of stone that still leave massive gray areas for the faithful to figure out.No, they don't. What you're calling rules are actually some examples of how some gods behave in some settings, not any sort of sweeping rules for how they behave. You specifically ignored the important part of the Commune spell along the way.Based on what? What are you reading that's making you think any of this? It's not the Commune spell, and there's no source in the core books that suggests anything that you're insisting is The Rules is true.</blockquote>

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