By Eric L. Boyd and Erik Mona
-Faiths and Pantheons is the primary 3e era source concerning the deities of Faerûn. It had big shoes to fill, with the trio of Powers and Pantheons, Faiths and Avatars and Demihuman Deities filling the same role during the 2e era. As a whole, I think that Faiths and Pantheons fails to grow into the large shoes it inherited. It, however, isn’t a totally meaningless and bad product, however.
-I personally believe that a lot of what is in Faiths and Pantheons is unnecessary. This includes the statistical write-ups for the deities themselves (only the ‘major’ “Faerûnian deities”), all of the deity feats and salient powers, along with explanations, and the Place of Worship section. In lieu of all of this, more information on the deities themselves could have been included. Information didn’t have to be reprinted from the 2e era books word-for-word, but expanded information to bring the deities themselves “up to date” would have been useful.
-Personally speaking, if the information on the first couple of chapters was expanded upon to fill the entire book, Faiths and Pantheons would be a whole different kind of book. The headlines in the Introduction chapter include: Native and Immigrant Deities, Pantheons, Dead Deities, and Faiths. Now, imagine if the book had been expanded to: Discuss native and immigrant deities, including a list of deities who are native and those who are immigrants. Now, imagine if the book had been expanded to: Discuss the various pantheons that exist, and have existed, and, of course, list said pantheons. Now, imagine if the book had been expanded to: Discuss various deities who have been killed in the setting, along with a list. Now, imagine if the book had been expanded to: Discuss different sects of the churches of different deities, different heresies, and things of that nature. That’d be a great book.
-That’s not to say that Faiths and Pantheons was a bad book. Like I said earlier, however, it simply wasn’t able to grow into the shoes of it’s predecessors, and as such, it gets disregarded easily, in favor of those earlier sources, that have more information. I mean, think of it like this: What took three books to discuss was compacted and condensed into one single book.
-Faiths and Pantheons had some redeeming qualities, however. For one thing, it had (mostly) nice artwork. I know for some people, this sort of thing doesn’t matter much- and, in my own case, it doesn’t too much- but I’d prefer good artwork to bad artwork. Faiths and Pantheons also has the Orc pantheon, which was not in the 2e trilogy of sourcebooks pertaining to the divine.
-All in all, Faiths and Pantheons could have been so much more. Ideally, I mean, a 220 page sourcebook could be written simply for deities that start with the letter ‘A’, and then the letter ‘B’, and so on, in an encyclopedic fashion. That’d be impractical, on WotC’s part, but…We can all dream, right?
-Out of a possible five Beholders, I give Faiths and Pantheons Three Beholders.
If you only started in 3e, then it could prove useful.
Thats pretty much the whole deal with that.
The sad part is, if you want more, you STILL need the 2e sources, so you're better off buying those three for $4 each from Paizo then shelling out for this.
....I disagree with some of the previous poster’s assertions. As a single source, F&P is a fine resource for most Realms DMs who play Third Edition D&D. It provides numerous adventure hooks, gives DMs more than just bare bones deity information and is not itself all one massive reprint.
That said, the tome thankfully dispenses with much of the extraneous lore that prior 2E products had to offer.
Unless you’re a Third Edition Realms DM who spends as much time reading about lore as he/she does planning your adventures, the 2E products are not the ones you want to purchase first.
On the subject of deity stats:
Like most readers, I share the opinion that the inclusion of game statistics for the deities are a waste of space. In fact, it's not until just recently that I've dipped into those stats in order to simulate an avatar of Vhaeraun for my (Epic Level) Third Edition Realms game (and that’s after nearly nine years of continuous campaign play).
That said, readers should know that WotC assumed that DMs would at some point pit their players against the gods and would need those statistics. A web enhancement was written by Sean K. Reynolds to supplement this assumption, by providing DMs with advice on how to handle deities in their Realms games (even if said DMs wanted to portray the gods as unfightable beings).
This web enhancement (Deities Do's and Don'ts) is noteworthy because it also includes names and descriptions for Monk and Paladin orders of the Realms, as well as information on divine manifestations that includes an extensive list of the sorts of animals, monsters, precious stones/minerals and colors such might take.
In my opinion much of the blame for the inclusion of deity stats in F&P belongs to an early change in WotC’s business strategy after the release of 3rd Edition D&D and the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting (FRCS), which involved them wanting to include “more crunch” (read: Rules) in D&D products.
Beyond deity stats, the prestige classes written for F&P are of poor quality in my opinion. While each write-up is linked to the lore of a deity, overall these PrC’s are not of the same caliber as those presented in the Third Edition FRCS hardback. The artwork is hit and miss and the game statistics just don’t grab a player’s attention. I’ve tried to use the Dreadmaster and Strifeleader as NPC antagonists, but found that neither prestige class had much bite to it.
Perhaps the most useful section for me aside from the general deity descriptions was the write up for the Abbey of the Sword on page 152. This location’s write-up is complete with game stags, map/layout of the keep, includes a couple new magic item effects and a realms-themed magic item (Mailed Gauntlets of Aencar), NPC statistics, information about the keep and how it runs, as well as a section on how to adapt this location to other areas of the Realms and even other faiths of the Realms.
I used the Abbey as a temple of Lathander in Westgate, for example.
The best part of the Abbey write-up is in my opinion the “In the Stacks,” section, which includes twenty six sample tomes one might find while perusing the War Library of the Abbey. My favorite tome from that list being the Imaskari Book of War.
Side note: The second web enhancement for F&P (The Leaves of Learning
By Eric L. Boyd) can be found here. It was cut from F&P for space reasons (thanks, deity stats ;))
You know, I liked those illustrations for the various clerical garbs from the 2e books, and FR Adventures as well... maybe not the best drawings out there, but they added something when you could reference them to describe the looks of the various churches.
Me too! And heck, I liked a lot of the depictions of the gods, too.
And heck, I liked a lot of the depictions of the gods, too.
-Eh, you know me, with the pictures.
That said, the tome thankfully dispenses with much of the extraneous lore that prior 2E products had to offer.
This I find amusing, in light of:
This web enhancement (Deities Do's and Don'ts) is noteworthy because it also includes names and descriptions for Monk and Paladin orders of the Realms, as well as information on divine manifestations that includes an extensive list of the sorts of animals, monsters, precious stones/minerals and colors such might take.
Considering that it was included in that presumably thankfully dispensed extraneous lore that the prior 2e products had to offer. ;)
And none of this is useful at all if your playing 4e, so there's no point in even arguiing over it.
what if someone is playing a modified 4e game???
Considering that it was included in that presumably thankfully dispensed extraneous lore that the prior 2e products had to offer. ;)
Seems to me like you're skipping over the unnecessary lore we both know exists, just to poke fun.
Tsk, tsk.
And speaking of tsk-ing (lol):
And none of this is useful at all if you’re playing 4e, so there's no point in even arguing over it.
I know you like to generalize, but spreading negativity in the form of deliberately false statements doesn't help.
We had:
- Name
- titles and epithets
- divine rank/plane/alignment
- portfolios/aliases/domains/superior/allies/enemies/symbol/worshipper alignment
- introduction
- Avatar information
- other manifestations
- A section on the church
- clergy classes
- clergy alignment
- whether they turned or rebuked
- overview of the church itself
- dogma of the faith
- day-to-day activities of the clergy
- important ceremonies and holidays
- major centers of worship
- affiliated orders
- priestly vestments
- adventuring garb
- Specialty Priest information
- Religion specific spells
I can see where adventuring garb and priestly vestments might be considered extraneous, but I thought they did a lot to differentiate the various clergies and give each church a very unique feel. Day to day activities... maybe, but it helped a lot with RPing a cleric I found. The avatar stuff was a bit much I'll admit, not as bad as F&P mind you, but even then at least it gave a fairly good description of what they looked like when they manifested one at least.
Technically we didn't need more than the stuff in the boxed set to run them, but if you're going to write a book about the deities, at least tell us enough about the churches so we have a decent chance of giving our players answers to their questions. Those books gave me that ability for the most part, and honestly, I used and expanded upon almost all of the information given and wished for more when questions came up that I had to improvise the answers to.
Generally speaking, F&P didn't deliver nearly as much about individual churches, and for the most part regurgitated what was in the three deity books for 2e with near-verbatim condensed versions of the entries. Updated, sure, but I found that the 2e versions offered considerably more wriggle room to DM's who might want a different take on the gods than F&P offered.
But that's just my take on things, your mileage may vary of course.
And yes, I was poking fun there, but I did indeed have a point to it.
And none of this is useful at all if your playing 4e.
Wrong.
Beyond deity stats, the prestige classes written for F&P are of poor quality in my opinion.
Not just the PrCs, but also the stats are of poor quality. None of them is unique or got at least a few unique SDAs. Instead, the all seem too generic. However, it seems that this is the best we can expect when one has to do 20+ extensive 3e deity stats for one book.
I wonder at what point it was the decided that the "in 3E considered to be major goddess" - Eilistraee had to fall during the descent of 3E? Furthermore, the errata of the FR sourcebooks books are few and far between and methinks F&P never saw one either, not even adjusting the PrC to 3,5E - something a decent designer can do within an hour or so.
-It makes no sense. Apparently Lolth and Eilistraee are major Faerûnian deities, in the "Faerûnian Pantheon"- something that doesn't even exist.
-Like I said, it would have been nice to see the book arranged into various regional pantheons, giving stats to those who are still alive, and just mentioning those who have died at some point during the process.
And speaking of tsk-ing (lol): I know you like to generalize, but spreading negativity in the form of deliberately false statements doesn't help.
You know, I made that statement rather then argue wiith you, and you still found a way of taking offense to it.
We were comparing the 3e guide to the 2e guides, and my point was it is silly to argue about something like THAT when 4e is here. maybe I could have worded it a little better... :embarrass
And like I said, I was avoiding a point of contention - I don't see how the 3e guide is of any use if you have the earlier three, unless you're running an epic 3e campaign for a bunch of god-killers. You don't need the stats otherwise, and all the lore is in the earlier works.
I also said that if you didn't own the earlier three, or if your new to FR, then the 3e book would indeed be useful.
See? You got me to argue my point anyway. :P
Personally, I don't use gods, so I don't find ANY of them useful IMG. I own the 2e books because they make for facinating reading, but I've yet to use one Iota of the info contained therein. However, if they came out with a book on the religions supporting said gods, I'd do a dance of joy.
Then again... that might knock the planet out of its orbit. ;)
-It makes no sense. Apparently Lolth and Eilistraee are major Faerûnian deities, in the "Faerûnian Pantheon"- something that doesn't even exist.
-Like I said, it would have been nice to see the book arranged into various regional pantheons, giving stats to those who are still alive, and just mentioning those who have died at some point during the process.
LK ... they only spent a limited amount of space on all the deities (3 densily filled books cast into one (or rather one half of one)) and never managed to convert the miising deities during the course of 8 years ... and you happen by and ask for regional pantheons!
;) BTW, nothing that cannot be done now. By people willing to spend their time on it and like working for the pre-Spellplague Realms, whether 1167 or 1378 DR.
LK ... they only spent a limited amount of space on all the deities (3 densily filled books cast into one (or rather one half of one)) and never managed to convert the miising deities during the course of 8 years ... and you happen by and ask for regional pantheons!
-Hey, if they can "blow up" the world in the span of one book, they can't separate deities into regional pantheons in a text chart? :P
and I agree with the review.
The original 2e books are much richer in terms of lore.
-Hey, if they can "blow up" the world in the span of one book, they can't separate deities into regional pantheons in a text chart? :P
I was speaking of 8 years of hectic 3E book-publishing while you start cheating with "cheap" 4E tabula rasa - tactics!
I'll agree that Faiths and Pantheons could have been better, but it remains useful to have on the shelf. It's easier to give it to a new player to brouse for gods then giving the same player the three 2e books. Once the player picks out a god then we can go to the 2e material as needed.
-Yeah, because it's everything in those 2e books smooshed into the one book. It's handy.
Good reference book at least... sort of like the condensed version of the 2e series. :D
Sort of a register for the other three then. Indeed!
Good reference book at least... sort of like the condensed version of the 2e series. :D
Are you trying to say that it was the 'Cliffs Notes' for the 2e books?
Because I'd have to agree...
Then again, thats a good way to desribe the 4e setting... all the basic info you need, wthout any of the actual literary goodness. :P
I'm sorry... I just couldn't resist that one.
"4eFR - the 'Cliff's Notes' of FR."
Why do you think I like that author's novels so much? :D
He DID his research!
Not only did he use canon wherever possible, but he embellished it and created new lore.
THAT is exactly the kind of novel I want to see every time, and would rush out to the bookstore in a heatbeat to buy.
In fact, if he did a 4e novel, I'd be sore-tempted to buy it, and thats saying A LOT in my case.
You thought Sentinelspire was made up for that novel?
-Yes.
Why do you think I like that author's novels so much? :D
-Because it was a good story, with good characters, with a few little "updates" to the region, and the inclusion of an awesome new place, Sentinelspire? The second part there is obviously wrong, in retrospect, but...
I liked it so much MORE because he sprinkled in just enough Realmslore, without it looking like he was just sprinkling it in... which is NOT easy to do.
I can think of one very big FR author name who's novels always appear to be set in some generic world, with Realmslore slapped-in as an afterthought.. and you can tell.
With Mark Sehestedt, you can tell he wasn't merely using the lore, he was inspired by it.
Perhaps you 'felt that' in your reading, without even knowing it?
Where can I find the website enhancement? I heard that it had some original stuff.
This one maybe?
http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/arch/we