All Forgotten Realms deities and Non-Human deities listed in the Player's Handbook are valid choices for characters in Adventurer's League play.
Clerics and characters with the Acolyte background MUST choose an associated deity. Deities are optional for all other characters.
Clerics may only select a deity that has their chosen domain, as listed in the Player's Handbook. The Death Domain is not a valid option without special certificates permitting it. Clerics with the Life Domain may select any deity that they wish, from the list of valid deities, for the purposes of Adventurer's League Play.
The upshot of all of that: Yes you can be a cleric to Umberlee, but you can't be CE nor NE. You could be CN or LE (or any of the other ones). You could pick the tempest or Life domain. But remember, it is up to *you* to figure out a reason/way/logic/personality/whatever-it-takes to make sure your PC is willing and able to work with the rest of the party.
Kentor_Slowhand_02 wrote:
I hope one damn day AL will allow PCs to get Deaths domain so you play as cleric of death whether good, evil, or neutral.
Nozareem wrote:
BRJN wrote:
How many different clerics do you want to play?
cleric already have 7 domains. I woul dprefer to see more sorcerer origin, more barbarian path, more hunter path, more druid, more bard college, more warlock pack, more fighter archetype, more paladin oath, more rogue archetype etc...
Wizard, cleric already have 7+ subclass option, before adding more, I would prefer to see more subclass option for those class with only 2 subclass option (specially those where some of those subclass option are obviously inferior to everything else)
I'm guessing the DM is preferring to ban evil deities/PCs from the table rather than run the risk of having to hand out warnings and/or remove players from the table for disruptive play. It goes against the AL rules, but at least does so for a solid reason.
Playing an evil character and/or worshipping an evil deity requires a fairly high level of maturity and role-playing skill to do well; otherwise, the entire table ends up having a poor experience. If the DM and the organizer have decided this is why they don't want evil characters at their table, I can't really argue with their reasoning.
If, on the other hand, the DM simply doesn't want to deal with evil characters, that's less defensible, but still probably a good reason not to play an evil character at that table.
--
Pauper
At a guess, it might be that WotC (and possibly the AL) do not want to return to the situation where a cleric could literally do everything better than a primary class given the right domain. So we may not see too many more domains unless they actually add something..
maybe
I can hope there is such a thing as lessons learned..
right?
I'd like to see small variations on current domains. Like take the Life domain, remove ability to give up heavy armor and the divine strike feats for the spellcasting abilities, call it Renewal.
Pauper wrote:
Riley37 wrote:
Polytheism in D&D has always struck me as sort of weird. Polytheists rarely worship a single god to the exclusion of the others. They have a pantheon that they worship, with each god representing a given portfolio. So you pray to Demeter that your crops are good and to Aretemis that your arrow flies true to your prey and to Poseidon when you embark on a ship voyage. Even 'evil' gods are tolerated and given their due respect to appease their wrath when warranted.
In D&D the common question is, "What god do you worship?" Even clerics, who do venerate and serve a particular god, should acknowledge and respect the other gods within their pantheon. It's like seeing/playing polytheism through the lens of monotheism that many of us were raised in. Polytheism becomes more akin to parallel monotheism, or cliques of people exclusively worshiping one god or another, all residing in the same community (like you might find in Jerusalem) in this model.
Ainulindalion wrote:
Primarchx wrote:
Ainulindalion wrote:
Ok as of now in AL you can play as a cleric of Bane who is a evil god, which I have a cleric for and I do play him as a badass tyrannical PC. In PC interaction he is intimadating and have up set some clerics of other deities but not in disruptive play form, only in flavor, like animate dead in front of a cleric and acolyte of Kelemvor, or being harsh/cruel to the NPC. You also have other evil gods like Talos of Tempest domain, Umberlee also of tempest, Auril of tempest Then there's Shar of trickery domain, Loth of trickery, Cyric of trickery, Beshaba as well. So only evil that is not offered is death the rest are option for PCs to choose if they want to go evil or be a cleric of a evil god.
My only issue is that the Elemental 'Gods' are not available for play. Id actually like to see the interaction between a Cleric of Kossuth (if you dont know is the Elemental 'God' (not really) of Fire. Hes better known in Thay and probably the most worshipped of the Elemental 'Gods' in the realms. He would be a natural fit for the Princes Campaign book as he struggles to put down the insurrection against the feral forces of the Elemental Evil and their version of 'fire' .
I
Tyranthraxus wrote:
Its much easier to play a Cleric/Priest of a LE God, than it is to play of a NE /CE God. I dread to even think what a PC Cleric of Talos would look like.
Tyranthraxus wrote:
BRJN wrote:
Tyranthraxus wrote:
If I were going to play a cleric of Cyric, I'd make one along the lines of Malik el Sami yn Nasser, the Seraph of Lies, cursed by Cyric to always tell the truth.
Of course, nobody believes him when he says he always tells the truth, since he's the Seraph of Lies...
She might even be Chaotic Good, convinced that honesty is always the best policy. Of course, it seldom seems to work out that way when she's around.
--
Pauper
I think some Gods just lend themselves better to player Characters. Of course we as gamers tend to make the rare 'god' choices.. the normal God choices 
.
I spent some good time last night in my Lost Mine Game explaining to the party who Lloth was and who Tymora was. I have a single player on my table who is a bit of a FR lore person who was very alarmed when he found a symbol of a Spider on a document, and when they showed the document to the local Cleric she gave them a bit of lore on both Her God and that other dark dark God.
Ainulindalion wrote:
Back to the original topic - Evil gods are allowed in AL, regardless of the alignment of the PC. There is no requirement I know of to be within 'one step' of your deity's alignment. NE and CE Gods are allowed, but NE and CE PCs are not.
Oraibi wrote:
There's a difference between saying that players can choose to claim to worship whoever they want (unless they're cleric or acolyte) and it automatically being disruptive play.
I've got "Siamorphe" listed on my paladin's character sheet (she's not an acolyte) and that's not one of the gods in the FR or Non-Human deities lists in the Player's Handbook, so technically she's just as illegal as Thor or Loki.
There's a long history of planar travel in the FR as well, and so in theory if you said "my character is from Greyhawk, got kidnapped by a spelljammer crew and taken to Sigil, where she then escaped to Faerun through a portal" you wouldn't necessarily be out of bounds or automatically disruptive. You could even claim to worship the Greyhawk gods, as long as you're not a cleric or an acolyte.
Heck, Tyr himself was once canonically the Norse god who came to Faerun, until his background was later retconned to include expy characters for his backstory, such as "Kezef the Chaos Hound" taking the place of Fenrir. So are Loki and Thor, from the same pantheon, really such a problem?
(Note: Any behavior which rises the level of disruptive behavior is definitely a problem, but that's true no matter which god someone claims to worship.)
Its been stated in other threads/facebook that only the FR Gods listed in the table in the back of the PHB and Deities from the Nonhuman table are legal choices to worship in AL. Not just Clerics.
Oraibi wrote:
Tyranthraxus wrote:
If you search through Facebook, search for threads made by Robert Adducci (spelling prob slightly off there). There is one there I remember.
If people want their character to worship a made-up deity that has no bearing on any real life religion, I have less issue with that. If people want to take real world deities that are not already AL legal I will consider it disruptive play if ANY of the other players at the table take offense. If no on takes offence then no harm, no foul.
I don't care if it's Jesus/Jehovah or Thor/Loki - people take their real-world religions VERY seriously and that's where I draw the line (and if you scoff and say 'that's absurd' - do realise that people DO still worship Thor in a very real and serious capacity. In fact a large number of Pagans/Heathens in my city who do worship these deities also play D&D.)
Silvanus, Oghma, and Bahamut get a pass (plus a few others not at the top of my head) - despite being real-world deities they are cannon Forgotton Realms too, and appaear on the tables for AL legal play.
shivafang wrote:
shivafang wrote:
Edit - How did I possibly forget celtic in my list lol (I myself am very fond of the celtic mythology). Added celtic and gaelic to my previous comment (there are subtle differences) - the celtic myths being proto-germanic in origin, whereas the gaelic myths of Wales, Ireland and Scottland deviate from a more ancestral root mythology common to celtic, gaelic, and norse mythologies.
Oraibi wrote:
Kalani wrote:
shivafang wrote:
Pauper wrote:
Actually - from a historical perspective: Akhenaten (Amenhotep IV - who died in 1336 or 1334 BC after reigning 17 years) is believed to be the person responsible for the first recorded monotheism (Also sometimes called a heonistic religion).
It was his decision to abandon traditional polytheistic religion in Egypt and institute the worship of Aten, thereby ushering in the religion of New Kingdom Egypt.
His attempt was largely unsuccessful, resulting in the gradual reinstatement of traditional polytheistic belief.
This is not to say other monotheistic beliefs didn't exist - only that there are no written records of them.
Just because you don't believe in gods doesn't mean you don't belive in an afterlife/reincarnation cycle that is independant of the gods. I have no idea how it works mechanically in Forgotton Realms, I'm not up on the lore - but there's no reasons there can't be a plane your soul goes into for those without deities.
Also - you don't have to believe in gods for gods to exist and vice-versa.
The D&D resurrection mechanics do not even presume an afterlife - only that the broken bits get put back together and the consciousness somehow gets rebooted. The concept of a 'soul' isn't even implied. Deities do not need to be involved in that process. (I had a Druid/Monk in Living Greyhawk who turned Athiest after she was killed trying to rescure treasure from a temple of Wee Jas that was about to be destroyed. Bearing in mind that Druids get their divine powers from the forces of nature, not from a single deity - so an Athiestic Druid makes sense.)
Now that said, there is sufficient evidence of the Gods in Forgotten Realms that they are known to exist - even if a character doesn't worship them actively and thus you cannot really have Athiests in FR. Greyhawk specifically had an Athiest movement in the Duchy of Urnst (which happens to be the reagion I played in in Living Greyhawk)
@Kallani - actually, as I understand it Egypt was monothestic for quite a long period of time. Specifically it monotheistic was during the period the Isrealites were slaves there, as they derivied much of their theology from the Egyptians. They derived their concept of angels from the Babylonians.
That is correct, although that came later. At the time Akhenaton attempted to convert Egypt to monotheism - it wasn't accepted and was eventually rejected (only to be rebooted later)
For those who are interested, a theology of the Forgotten Realms:
On death, a soul travels to the Fugue Plane, where it awaits judgment by the God of the Dead. After a waiting period (which in some editions was equivalent to the number of days during which a character could still be brought back to life by the raise dead spell), the soul would be escorted to the City of Judgment, there to be judged by the God of the Dead. There were three verdicts:
Faithful - the soul had chosen a divine patron and abided by that patron's philosophy and dictates during its life. It's reward was to be sent to the planar afterworld run by its patron, there to serve as a petitioner for all eternity, though the patron could allow the petitioner to return to the mortal world.
Faithless - the soul had not chosen a divine patron, or simply not spent enough devotion on any divine patron to have achieved faith. It's punishment was to be mystically cemented into the Wall of the Faithless, the defensive wall surrounding the City of Judgment. Unless freed, usually by a demon seeking souls for the Abyss, the soul would ultimately be fully aborbed into the Wall, but once placed in the Wall, it could not return to the mortal world.
False - the soul professed the worship of a divine patron, but betrayed or otherwise abandoned that worship without replacing it with another of equal fervor. The punishment for a False soul was entirely up to the God of the Dead, but (at least for the more lawful Gods of the Dead) would tend to fit the soul's crime against the gods. (During the brief time when Cyric was God of the Dead, all bets were off.) As with the Faithless, the False were prohibited from returning to the mortal world.
Neither Living Forgotten Realms nor Adventurers League has ever enforced this theology in play, which largely dates from the Time of Troubles and the Third Edition FRCS, so it's more a curiosity than actual rules in Organized Play. However, nothing stops a player from voluntarily agreeing to abide by this theology if it is important to that player -- so a player who decides that her deceased 3rd level fighter who worshipped Waukeen was not sufficiently profit-motivated might well decide not to use Faction Charity to bring her back from the dead. I've met a few folks, mainly at GenCon, who sincerely believe that if they don't abide by this theology, they're not really playing in the Realms, but rather in a generic setting with artificial Realms flavoring.
--
Pauper
As long as players don't try to enforce this theology on others - I personally have no problem. If however, someone said we were playing "generic setting with realms flavour" and tried to force everyone to adopt their version of the realms - I would consider it an act of disruptive play. I am fortunate that even the hardcore realms fans at my store don't act this way (but I know such one-true-wayists) exist
Kalani wrote:
We need to invent a new Realmsword. (Or locate the old one.)
An "atheist" is a person who is persuaded that the gods do not exist. Such an assertion in the Realms, where the gods perform minor miracles on a daily basis, would be taken as a sign of insanity - rejecting the evidence of your own senses.
"Agnostic" doesn't quite cut it either, since this person isn't sure if the gods exist or not, more evidence is wanted.
The FR version of an atheist would be a person who acknowledges the gods exist, but doesn't believe that "worship" is the proper mode of interaction between Gods and Mortals.
The biggest problem I see with casting Resurrection on an atheist is, what is the "address of the call"? As DM, I would not forbid the effort but I might require an extra Special Material Component - a lock of hair or something similar - that believing souls don't need because the location of their soul is known.
An Atheist is Faithless. It means when they die, they are screwed for Eternity.
You might be looking for Maltheist who actually believe Gods do exist, but think they are all petty and cruel and refuse to worship them.
The Paizo setting of Golarion actually has a country where Religon is outlawed and whilst they recognise religon, they have banned it because of previous religous crusades causing death and destruction.
BRJN wrote: