Since Bhaal is the God of Murder, would he promote the use of weapons of mass destruction? You know, Nuclear missiles, the mass release of nerve agents, mustard gas, etc.
Elton74 wrote:
MisterFlibble wrote:
Elton74 wrote:
There is a lot of stuff that is not logical in the Forgotten Realms that I have trouble with, after all Occam's Razor and all that. I was just asking about Weapons of Mass Destruction. Given the motivation of the people on the Realms, though, if someone were to make the equivalent of a columb bomb (those nuclear missiles) with magic, he'd have to be seen as some kind of madman to cause mass-death. No one god would be pleased to have their worshippers be snuffed out in a blink of an eye, even Cyric.
Given how the dieties interact with the lives of Faerunians (they do it even more than Christ, gosh they are such pests), you'd think that once someone was making one, they'd go tell a cleric. Some will sit back and watch and be entertained, while others would most likely give a bunch of adventurers a quest to stop making the columb bomb.
Elton74 wrote:
Probably not as people can nuke his worhippers as well and the fear caused would likely divert worship to other deities of fear/loss/healing so Shar wouold probably benefit more than Bhaal.
Gond says what can and cannot exist, technologically speaking, is usually the way I handled it, Physics be damned! Well, not really, I usually put the blame on an ancient elven mythal making tech work oddly, if at all, and leave it at that. But I love blaming the elves for all the ills of the world, so that could just be me. 
Irennan wrote:
Caolin wrote:
Irennan wrote:
Heh, of course it can't be proven wrong. Mathematic is self-contained, AFAIK. If yout take a given assumption about a phenomenon, consequences (correctly) derived from it can't be proven wrong unless you prove the original assumption wrong (with experiments, or other evidence, for example). Since (according to what little I know, at least) you can't collect reliable and accurate data from alt universes that work with different physics laws (unless you knew those laws since the beginning), then you can't demonstrate that the concepts at the base of that theory are wrong (or right). Idk if it is even possible to somehow interact with different universes: I mean, you could pop into nothing upon entering them because molecular bonds and electric forces might work differently there.
Nonetheless it's nice food for thoughts.
I guess it kinda depends on what sort of multiverse one is talking about. If it's just one that exists because of different possible actions on our parts, then I would say the laws were virtually identical. I doubt it makes much of a difference to the laws of physics if I chose to have a turkey sandwich instead of pizza for lunch, but by necessity it would create a variance in a historical context, as it would for each and every person who ever existed. Within that framework, I seriously doubt it would make a difference in the slightest to the physical laws the multiverse operated under. If you include the possibility of something like an Omniverse though, where radically different rules apply to the universe, like magic and dragons actually existing, then it would, almost by definition, require a different set of physical laws to exist in place of the ones we know. I usually view Faerun as an alternate Earth of sorts, since humans existing on so many different planets is pretty unlikely, even with the notion of parallel evolution coming into play. Unless one looks at the existence of Portals and Gates allowing for migration across multiple habitable planets, which is kinda built in to the various settings by implication at least, if never explicitly stated. That being said, I don't really see any real reason why the two models couldn't happily co-exist side-by-side, since the idea of Omniverse is infinite possibility in the first place.
If Bhaal gains power from a death, and gains even more power from multiple deaths, then yes he would love to try to nuke a city. However, almost none of his worshippers live in the countryside so this may be a short-sighted plan. And as noted elsewhewre, the other gods would become aware of the plan and set things in motion to cause adventurers to exterminate the Bhaal congregation in question. Wizards (Szass Tam comes to mind) will want such power too - imagine him with a neutron bomb and Very Mass Create Undead prepared.
Chemical weapons, well, are not as effective as advertised. Unlike soldiers in the trenches of the Western Front, civilians tend to run away from big colored clouds, and the wind then breaks up the cloud. If the local nobility has invented central air (the Romans had central heating), you can kill off a building-full at once; why not design a theatre for the purpose? Plan to gas the place on a civic holiday; use a performance as cover. If "strike the shepherd and the sheep will scatter" holds true, a leader-less city should descend into anarchy for a while.
The important questions:
- Does the god of murder gain more power from a single ritualized death than he gains from the size of the death toll?
- Does the "density" of killings (lots of people dead in a short space of time, vs. many more killed over a lengthy span) matter?
- If Bhaal approves of the Joker, does he favor Jack Nicholson's portrayal or Heath Ledger's portrayal more?
Answer these (plus more) and you will find the answer to your original question.
The sarin attacks in the Tokyo subway should tell us just how effective any gas based attack is likely to be... considering that the conditions of the attack were pretty much ideal, it still didn't amount to much in terms of actual death toll versus projected death toll.
Though that last question there BRJN is utterly classic, and completely on target.
I suppose the question is does Bhaal find more favor in personal individual murder or large scale indescriminate death