Post/Author/DateTime	Post
yossarius 04-29-06, 02:55 PM	It seems to me that religious evangelism requires an assumption that God has directly spoken to the evangelist, or at least that God directly created or inspired some religious text which the evangelist uses to justify his position (the Bible, Book of Mormon, Qoran, etc.) How do you convey this in Eberron, where it is plainly known (to the players, at least) that the gods do not take any active role in the world? Discounting the unorthidox psuedo-deities (the Silver Flame, the Deathless, etc.), how can an NPC ever convince the PCs that a deity is taking a direct interest in their activities?
LordVanduu 04-29-06, 03:07 PM	...how can an NPC ever convince the PCs that a deity is taking a direct interest in their activities? The same way they do in real life. Anything that goes your way is God working in your favor, and anything that doesn't means that God works in mysterious ways and that he must have wanted it this way for the greater plan.
Crystalforged 04-29-06, 03:33 PM	I'd say it would work more or less exactly like it does in the real world. The evangalist believes he has heard the word of his god and is doing his will regaurdless of whether or not this is true. No one knows if the Eberron gods really are communicating with their subjects but some of those subjects believe they are and there is no way to prove conclusively that they're wrong.
Hodo 04-29-06, 04:02 PM	Also, unlike the real world, where a providing evidence that a faith healer or miracle worker is even healing or working miracles can be difficult and more easily debated, in Eberron, you can actually see the effects. They are predictable, measurable, and repeatable. If real evangelists could literally fire rays of light from their fingers, summon extra dimensional beings, and fly as a result of their faith, they would be even more effective in earning the trust of potential converts.
Majorafire77 04-29-06, 08:42 PM	Well, of course, there's proof and then there's "proof". While there certainly is no definitive evidence of the gods on Eberron, there certainly are things that worshipers of the deities would like to claim does indeed prove the existence of their god(s). An example would be the Cauldron of Boldrei (S:CoT 171). I doubt there's any evidence that Boldrei herself created the Cauldron, but it fits her profile well and it's one of the most difficult-to-construct (CL 20th) magic items on Khorvaire right now. The evangelists of Boldrei would obviously use it as proof of her existence, even though it's doubtful anyone knows who really created it.
DarkWarriorKarg 04-30-06, 11:27 AM	Evgangelist + Vestige = Mystery Cult "Behold the presence of Dol Dorn!" Persecuted becaus ethey may have a better "connection" to the gods. (In reality, powerful vestiges of deluded fools/ousiders who THINK they are the dieties.)
Majorafire77 04-30-06, 02:38 PM	Evgangelist + Vestige = Mystery Cult "Behold the presence of Dol Dorn!" Persecuted becaus ethey may have a better "connection" to the gods. (In reality, powerful vestiges of deluded fools/ousiders who THINK they are the dieties.) Why would they be persecuted? Wouldn't they be made high priests of the church? By the way, your misspelling of "evangelist" has prompted me to think of a new PrC: the vegangelist, one who speaks out against the evils of eating meat.
DarkWarriorKarg 04-30-06, 06:29 PM	Why would they be persecuted? Wouldn't they be made high priests of the church? By the way, your misspelling of "evangelist" has prompted me to think of a new PrC: the vegangelist, one who speaks out against the evils of eating meat. I type too fast, sometimes. I shouldn't do that before coffee... I think I've met a few Vegangelists... Anyway, back to the subject at hand. Not if their teachings are counter-establishment. And note that, in my theoretical setup, the vestiges are NOT the gods, but spirits that claim to be such. So the church leaders are essentially correct in countering their "lies". Why, they could be calling upon the sleeping powers sealed in Khyber... So, let's see... 1) Threatening the power structure. 2) Mistaken identities of those granting the powers. 3) Possibly corrupted by the Raksasha Rajas. Oh, and even if true, I sincerely doubt the SF college of cardinals would appreciate anyone claiming to channel Tira Miron... (by the description, she almost sounds like a vestige... feels logical) OTOH, I could see a secret order of Knights, dedicated to the KotSF, who can channel the presence of Tira Miron in a limited way...
Koriel 04-30-06, 11:50 PM	An evangelist might recieve a vision or a dream. An evangelist may have received his revelation by casting a divination spell. Those do work normally in Eberron. They may also receive their revelations from beings claiming to be messengers of the gods, that is, angels or other outsiders. They may have found a piece of the Dragonic Prophecy, or other signs and portents which they might interpret according to their beliefs. I think the real intent of faith-based religion in Eberron was to stop the gods from directly telling the party what to do, or from having the gods directly solve the characters problems for them. Direct divine intervention had become a rather commonplace and cheesy plot device in D&D. It really becomes over-the-top when gods walk the earth and do battle with one another like Godzilla vs Megalon they way they do in Forgotten Realms. Characters become pawns and spectators rather than the main protagonists of the story. So what they've done is make the characters, not the gods, the centerpiece of the campaign. Characters will be forced to rely on their own conscience and strengths, and not be led by the nose or bailed out of trouble by the DM via the "gods". So you might have NPC evangelicals who claim to have personally received the message of their gods, you just don't want to have the gods to directly interact with the characters like that. That's just my personal take on the matter.
ArcTan 05-01-06, 12:44 AM	Why would an evangelist be *required* to have direct, supernatural empirical proof of his religion? Why couldn't an evangelist attempt to proselytize based on the more abstract, philosophical ideas behind his faith? Those are the reasons most people who convert convert anyway; in real life, people may *believe* that the Bible was divinely inspired, but they, themselves, have no direct proof of this and come to that belief for other reasons. Keep in mind that Eberron's setting description says that the gods *don't* interfere in Eberron *in an obvious way*, but that doesn't mean they don't exist, that they don't interfere in Eberron in non-obvious ways (through what we would call "divine providence"), or that they can't *start* interfering in Eberron in obvious ways if the nature of the world changes, or that they didn't *originally* interfere in Eberron in obvious ways and then stopped for some reason. All of these are possible. In fact, it may even be that, while the DM is definitely guided to not allow Dol Dorn to incarnate as an avatar and start walking around, there's no reason a random seemingly-miraculous thing can't happen that people attribute to Dol Dorn, and that a lot of people believe Dol Dorn causes miracles all the time, but can't prove it. That's how religion and discussion of religious happenings tends to work in real life, and I think the point of KB's stricture against direct divine intervention is to make Eberron religion feel more like real life religion. It doesn't mean making Eberron a place of enforced agnosticism where the *rule* is that gods don't exist or can't interact directly with mortals (and, if such a rule does exist in your campaign, most religious people aren't aware of it and probably don't subscribe to it); it just means that Eberron isn't Forgotten Realms where the deities incarnate all the time to hang out with mortals, fight with them, sleep with them and chat about stuff with them.
JulesCARV 05-01-06, 02:09 AM	Well... the approach my character (http://boards1.wizards.com/showthread.php?t=625949) took was to try to evangelize the party's lawful evil Dhakaani goblin ninja by inviting her to the Church of the Silver Flame and claiming that there was going to be an ice cream social. She didn't come. I can't understand why anyone would turn down free ice cream :(. I'm not sure if the Church of the Silver Flame actually does have ice cream socials, though. I hope so, though. I'd hate to think my character lied about that..