The great deception revealed in 'religious texts'

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

Sejs is wise. Listen to the winged cube.

 

[Driddle]

The responses here speak strongly of how accepting people are of violence. It's just assumed that, well gee, of course every gawd in the game needs a preferred weapon.

What's wrong with that?

 

[Knight Otu]

Well, there are non-violent weapons, aren't there?

 

[eris404]

I feel compelled to mention that game designers have to design to the "lowest common denominator," for lack of a better term. I'm not criticizing their ability here, I'm just saying that they have to be able to please the widest possible audience in order to stay in business. The reason why they do things like give favored weapons to seemingly pacificistic gods in published works is because they feel that the majority of players would need it, find a use for it and/or would miss it if wasn't there. It's the same reason why they kept alignment or the paladin as a base class, even though there are plenty of people who don't like those concepts either.

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

Actually, Driddle, the common consensus is that you ain't got a leg to stand on.

 

[Macbeth]

The responses here speak strongly of how accepting people are of violence. It's just assumed that, well gee, of course every gawd in the game needs a preferred weapon.

What's wrong with that?

No, I must disagree. The consensus speaks of people's ability to take what's written, and adapt it. Most books traget adventurers, so a diety that doesn't allow violence wouldn't work. If you really want a pacifist diety, do it in you campaign, but I think the consensus is that people can roleplay AND have some combat.

 

[Angcuru]

To me, it makes no sense for a god to have a weapon in the first place. Weapons are tools for intelligent creatures who do not possess natural means for killing stuff. Gods have power that renders weapons obsolete.

 

[Psion]

The responses here speak strongly of how accepting people are of violence. It's just assumed that, well gee, of course every gawd in the game needs a preferred weapon.

No, Driddle, I at least most specifically didn't say that.

What I did say (more clearly and pointedly) is that the problem is not the deities. It's the clerics. Clerics have spells and domains that assume some combat emphasis. Most settings assume that the principal divine spellcasting servant of a deity is a cleric, even going so far as to state druids don't require a deity.

It's not the deity that requires a weapon. It's the cleric (and their spells and domains) that require weapons.

The solution that I proposed was that there be an in-mileu reason for this. Scarred lands was a good example: all gods had a recent war and the whole world got involved in that war.

If you want a deity without weapon designations, you can do what I am considering: have them stand outside of the theological pantheon or tradition that encompasses cleric-worshipping deities and give them a different class, like Healer from mini's handbook, favored soul (though that's more warlike), or various third party classes like Green Ronin's Shaman.

 

[fusangite]

D&D societies are martial societies. Any religion exists in the context of the society in which it is practiced. Thus, medieval Christianity was a martial religion in which ecclesiastics all fought if necessary, despite what some sections of the New Testament said.

There are a lot of societies that D&D is not designed to model. But in the societies that D&D is designed to model, violence is how problems are solved for the most part. Just as the god of peace in a martial society is likely to have an order of warriors, one would expect that members of a cult worshipping war in our society today would probably not have an order of warriors and any more than a ceremonial sense.

Religions always exist in a social context. D&D society is the context in which all D&D religions exist and D&D society is violent.

 

[Zappo]

D&D is an RPG only in the narrow sense that you're expected to role-play your way through combat scenario after combat scenario.

Dude, do you realize that you have taken one of the most eminently irrelevant bits of D&D and extrapolated that the entire game is only about combat? I mean, you are not going to convince anyone this way, save for people who already agree with you to begin with. If you want to attack the game as a whole, you need to find much more meat for your argument. When you want to prove something, you need, y'know, proof.

Always a weapon. Weapon weapon weapon. Something that, by its nature, is supposed to inflict damage on another creature.

What about a sap? Mancatcher? Buckets of cold water? I guess that using a net for your Yunitee example didn't make for a good enough contrast.

There's no reason every gawd needs to have a "favored weapon." None.

Here's one: the spiritual weapon spell. It's a small reason, but it's there.

It's just laziness and narrowmindedness on the part of the game designers -- and the customer/players who allow it to continue.

I don't get where you pull "laziness" from; not giving a favored weapon to a god is less work than giving one, so how is a designer lazy for doing more work? Also, I don't "allow" it to continue, I want it to continue. I like my rules to be consistant, and that means that exceptions need to be justified. That's good design.

I'm all for a "favored something else" instead -- favored effect, favored spell, favored color, favored skill, favored rodent casserole recipe ... whatever. Haven't seen it yet, though.

They exist, they are called domains, and they are infinitely more important than the god's favored weapon, both in characterization and in mechanics.