This has to do with a Cleric of Sune that is starting to see their abilities as a means to gently force others hesitant about their feelings, to love. They aren't at the brink yet of losing their "Good" alignment, but it's getting there.
Of course, a change of alignment isn't going to make the character any less of a cleric of whoever.
Of course, a change of alignment isn't going to make the character any less of a cleric of whoever.
-In certain cases, (LG to CE, when the individual is a Cleric of a LG deity) of course it will.
-In certain cases, (LG to CE, when the individual is a Cleric of a LG deity) of course it will.
Not in 4e. Once the powers are invested, they're yours. You may find yourself persona non grata with the church officials and hierarchy, but your powers cannot be taken from you.
Personally, I am not very fond of the way 4E resolves that. Goodbye almost-omnipotent and omnipresent divine being, hello divine magic Duracell. Bleh.
The one standing on the edge...
Honestly, though, it is true. The ones most likely to 'fall from grace' by their respective faiths, are the ones that have or tend to extreme views for their beliefs.
.That is to say, do clerics typically fail to live up to their duties because of an internal weakness (morally, spiritually, etc) or because outside challenges/temptation is too great?
This has to do with a Cleric of Sune that is starting to see their abilities as a means to gently force others hesitant about their feelings, to love. They aren't at the brink yet of losing their "Good" alignment, but it's getting there.
I'd say that violated the chaotic part of the alignment more than the good, though that's possibly in jeopardy as well. I'd say it depended on what and how they were doing the forcing. If the feelings were there for the person they are being pushed towards, but there was too much fear or shyness to act on them, then I don't think that's really evil for a Sunite if its done in the best interests of the people its done to... unless one side doesn't reciprocate and the cleric thinks they should and forces the issue... in which case I'd say they just violated Sune's ethos massively and were in for something bad to happen to them if they didn't make things right in a hurry. I'd say just forcing others to act on their feelings without doing investigation into how both of them truly felt warranted some DSP's to be accumulated as well, so to speak.
Do they have to fall though... I'd say no. I see little reason why Sune would grant abilities like Charm Person if they weren't meant to be used. The key there is using them wisely, especially within the context of the wisdom score of the character. Generally speaking, while I don't think its ever stated explicity, for Clerics who can cast a spell of a given level, I'd say it was likely they had the wisdom not only to cast the spell, but when not to cast the spell... I'd say it was implied anyway.
A priest of an evil or even neutral god can't really fall, and even a CG god would allow some leeway. Ergo, the more 'good' the god, and the more strict, the easier it is for the priest to be 'lead astray'.
The strictest gods are the hardest taskmasters, and that is why so many give-in to weakness while in their service.
As to who's most vulnerable... I'd say the person who had never failed or truly felt temptation early on. Spend your life as a paragon of whatever without having truly been tested by that desire for some forbidden thing or person, that sting of defeat, and you're pretty much on a fast ride to some place bad... I don't think being "more good" is really a recipe for falling unless its added to being ultimately naive. There has to be a conscious choice for that good to really stick, not just the only thing you've ever known, so the path in life is never really questioned until its... well, too late.
Wasn't there a way for the church to divest you of your powers if it gets you?
Personally, I am not very fond of the way 4E resolves that. Goodbye almost-omnipotent and omnipresent divine being, hello divine magic Duracell. Bleh.
No. There are no more 'paladin traps', which can only be a good thing, and so long to Deus Ex Machinas and more things to draw attention away from the PCs.
.As to who's most vulnerable... I'd say the person who had never failed or truly felt temptation early on. Spend your life as a paragon of whatever without having truly been tested by that desire for some forbidden thing or person, that sting of defeat, and you're pretty much on a fast ride to some place bad... I don't think being "more good" is really a recipe for falling unless its added to being ultimately naive. There has to be a conscious choice for that good to really stick, not just the only thing you've ever known, so the path in life is never really questioned until its... well, too late.
Are you say that to to truly be good, you must have suffered? Couldn't there be someone predisposed towards a certain alignment or morals or way of thought?
No. There are no more 'paladin traps', which can only be a good thing, and so long to Deus Ex Machinas and more things to draw attention away from the PCs.
No tools for DMs to use to reign-in unruly players, or those who want all the benefits from a class, without having to follow it's downside?
Why, you make 4e sound like a spoiled brat's wetdream.
Thanks for the wake-up call...
Note I said "force" and not "persuade"
I did indeed note that... I was hoping that was a linguistic innaccuracy, but... yeah, definite DSP for that in my book were I your DM.
Are you say that to to truly be good, you must have suffered? Couldn't there be someone predisposed towards a certain alignment or morals or way of thought?
No, not really. I'm not even suggesting that suffering is a key to avoiding falling. I'm getting at the idea that someone who's had the chance of being evil and knowingly rejected it, while still comprehending what they were passing up. I guess its more of the idea of being good because you mean it, as opposed to being good because that's what's expected of you. Do you do not indulge in evil behaviour because you find it unappealing and wrong for you, or do you not indulge in it because you've been taught not to and the idea of others finding out and condemning you. There's a difference between the two... one is based in rejection of evil as an idea, the other in fear of peers finding out and being ostracised. One knows the trap, sees the folly of that path, and avoids it... the other doesn't think that far ahead and only sees the punishment that could result. When it comes down to it, the one who fears it is drawn to it, will fall if given a good enough opportunity, but who otherwise won't if the circumstances don't allow for it. Its the ones who go seeking out those circumstances to test themselves who are the ones you really have to worry about...
No. There are no more 'paladin traps', which can only be a good thing, and so long to Deus Ex Machinas and more things to draw attention away from the PCs.
This statement has been said a bit too often, you know. As for deus ex machinas, paladin traps and the like, that's a problem with player-DM coordination, or just poor DMing. The new rules don't necessarily prevent that - and if anything, a player who ignores the fluff and dogma without any repercussions is just as annoying as an overzealous DM. Besides, Eberron does the entire "divine characters autonomous from their deities" stuff better.
Anyway, regarding the original post - I think it strongly depends on the particular cases, in particular how "forceful" or gentle the Sunite was, whether the two were in love and/or would be happy, etc. As long as Sune's dogma was upheld, chances are the cleric won't fall unless they do something quite drastic. If they did a mind trick or two to assure that a Romeo and Juliet story would work out, or to persuade the prince that the beautiful and kind village girl actually would make a good wife regardless of what his advisors say, I think they're acting as good Sunites should.
Not in 4e. Once the powers are invested, they're yours. You may find yourself persona non grata with the church officials and hierarchy, but your powers cannot be taken from you.
-A person who has the powers of a deity isn't a priest/priestess. Being a priest/priestess is as much a political position as it is a D&D class. When a deity's church "throws you out", you are no longer a priest/priestess, even if the new D&D rules allow for the continued use of Divine magic somehow. You'd be, in D&D terms, a Cleric, but in the Forgotten Realms, you certainly wouldn't be an "authorized" priest/priestess anymore.
What needs to be done out of game is to discuss, clearly, what the player and you as DM consider proper actions to take by a Sunite Cleric. This will save you tons of headache and such down the road once you and the player are on the same page.
Next, you need to make clear the options. The most obvious is the feat in Power of Faerûn that allows the cleric to embrace a heresy. If the player is adamant that this is how they want to play their character, and accepts that it is moving away from the traditional view of Sune, then that is a fantastic option. It allows the player to put their own spin on things.
The next option is minor intervention. When a player begins acting against the wishes of the deity, they could - and as a player, should - receive some type of warning. Dream visions, disapproving feelings... it is really something the cleric will know as they share a direct bond with the deity. The exception being, of course, if the cleric's view of the deity has become radically different than those of the established church. In which case they are a heretic.
The final option is for the cleric to fall, assuming you are not going about things from a 4E perspective. Personally, I enjoy the middle ground and using the feat. I like to encourage players to play their characters in whatever way they wish. It also opens up several lines of conflict, those they are obviously manipulating as well as conflict with the church itself.
Conflict is the lifeblood of a good story, and I am generally against punishing players for choosing a path that will bring conflict upon them. It simply makes a DM's life so much easier. This story could be fantastic if you help it grow.
So to sum it up, I believe the best approach to take here is to focus more on consequences over punishment.
Answer: One who is clumsy and perched on something high? :D
I highly doubt falling requires being elevated to any extent, I've seen people fall off the couch or, worse yet, fall over from sitting on the ground. Being clumsy always helps, however...
Which may or may not have to do with the worship of their god(s).
And, to think, I was going to buy popcorn for this show.
Given this radical change from 3E to 4E, and that "flagrantly and openly defying your deity's tenets" will earn you only the enmity of the faithful... is it even possible to "fall" as one could in prior editions?
Seems as if the Spellplague might've had an deep impact on clerical magic as well. If true, there could be thousands of splinter faiths and cults, far more radical than the minor heretics of Lathander who believed that he and Amaunator were one in the same.
If ordainment is indeed what grants power now, then the investiture of power in a new cleric becomes a very serious thing for a church to do. Rather than knowing the heart of a prospective priest by the deity's calling, it's the church who must now decide. Very, very interesting!
I think that's silly. :P
I prefer the way 4th Edition deals with the cleric and divine powers. To quote Therise:
Seems as if the Spellplague might've had an deep impact on clerical magic as well. If true, there could be thousands of splinter faiths and cults, far more radical than the minor heretics of Lathander who believed that he and Amaunator were one in the same.
If ordainment is indeed what grants power now, then the investiture of power in a new cleric becomes a very serious thing for a church to do. Rather than knowing the heart of a prospective priest by the deity's calling, it's the church who must now decide. Very, very interesting!
Therise sums up my line of thought rather well.
I am of course a big fan of heresies and this method makes it much easier. However, from a canon stand point it is easy to imagine that Ao would punish the gods (again) just as he did during the Time of Troubles. Now their interactions with Toril are limited greatly, and must rely upon mortals even more than they did before.
I like the idea that everyone -knows- the gods are real, but at the same time the gods themselves are mysterious beings. I've always hated the notion that you could literally just pick your gods brain when you had a question.
I imagine being granted divine magic is a very high honor in the churches. Most 'priests' would no longer be clerics, only the very important ones. Of course, I also like the idea of favored souls, to use a class example from 3E. So certain individuals may simply be 'born' with holy / unholy power, blessed by a deity while in the womb.
Of course, none of that means that the mortal is going to do -exactly- what the deity wants.
Personally, although I think this is an interesting idea in 4E to transfer "power" from the deity to the respective churches, I agree with Stigger that in the Realms it really doesn't make a lot of sense given everything that's come before.
We now have a fundamental change, as the gods are disconnected from that direct influence over their faithful. Once ordained, a priest who disagrees with their deity can act in ways that are (potentially) hugely detrimental to the faith with only a secular response possible. If someone is really out of line, the deity's options are reduced to sending out one of their planar minions to physically knock some tenets back into place.
Suppose, however, that an entire church or region has a charismatic high priest that firmly believes in a major change in the deity's tenets, that they are necessary for some reason. The faithful now control ordainment, so there is no loss of power from the deity, which means ultimately that a powerful church official (or a high council) could introduce changes that the deity would either have to accept or attempt to eradicate by direct intervention. Should the deity incite a civil war within his or her own church and risk loss of power as worshippers die in droves, or retain the volume of followers and be dictated to by their own worshippers?
Story-wise, it opens up the possibility of conflict that could be very interesting for narrative fiction. But game-wise, it removes a major thematic tool from the DM ("you sense your deity's displeasure, and your power diminishes") and replaces it with a "rocks fall, everyone dies" option (e.g. a bolt from the blue, or an avenging angel comes to slay the offending PC).
I imagine being granted divine magic is a very high honor in the churches. Most 'priests' would no longer be clerics, only the very important ones. Of course, I also like the idea of favored souls, to use a class example from 3E. So certain individuals may simply be 'born' with holy / unholy power, blessed by a deity while in the womb.
I wouldn't mind it, but this would mean the deity is able to bless whoever it chooses, so the whole idea of church investiture becomes less a little superfluous.
Personally, I think that making the gods unable to freely grant and revoke powers is a step for the worse, and basically makes them impotent and unimportant. So what does this mean for a cleric? Before, changing one's beliefs was a fairly big thing - as it should be for a character whose life and power depend on belief and devotion. Now that is optional, and the cleric need not be any different from your average joe. So the only difference between Jane the Priestess, being able to use divine power to change the world, and Joe Dungcleaner is that she got a pointy hat and a few mumbo-jumbo words said at her. Interesting in a sardonic kind of way, but usually rather disappointing, imo. Besides, I tend to associate such divine dilemmas more with Eberron than FR.
In 3.x, the gods could revoke divine power at will... but hey, I liked the idea that mortals who used supernatural powers had to abide by the rules those powers came with. It made them more important, I think. Besides, most gods tended to be fairly patient - perhaps most of them liked having the odd heresy, to see what things worked best "down there". At the end of the day, as long as the juice was coming they weren't in immediate danger.
Stigger-
I think that's silly. :P
I do my best to amuse. :P ;)
Therise sums up my line of thought rather well.
I am of course a big fan of heresies and this method makes it much easier. However, from a canon stand point it is easy to imagine that Ao would punish the gods (again) just as he did during the Time of Troubles. Now their interactions with Toril are limited greatly, and must rely upon mortals even more than they did before.
As much as I generally dislike post dissection, you cover a lot of ground here...
Punishment by Ao... again... just what, thirty years after the Time of Troubles? And for what, the action of a few stupid deities (read Cyric, Shar, and Tyr), while the rest were pretty much engaged in damage control? I have a difficult time believing Ao would consider 30 years much more than a blink of an eye, much less sufficient time to see if the gods have cleaned up their acts. Just getting the mortals onboard with the changes is going to take at least three generations, and that can be a long damned time for the Seldarine.
Why would it be in the best interests of the divine to greatly limit their interactions with the world? Why would reliance on mortals be a good thing? That the divine and the mortal have a symbiotic relationship is unquestionable, but putting them into an almost subservient relationship (at least comparatively to previous) with mortals just strikes me as... counterproductive for the future of the divine. Why bother being a god when you're effectively just a big battery to empower a bunch of mortals with... who you can't even really cut off when they start doing things you don't like?
I like the idea that everyone -knows- the gods are real, but at the same time the gods themselves are mysterious beings. I've always hated the notion that you could literally just pick your gods brain when you had a question.
I utterly fail to see how this makes them mysterious beings... subservient, slightly irrelevant, and effectively powerless to stop abuse of their names by any but indirect means, sure, those I could see those applying to them, but not mysterious. That you could 'pick your gods brain' before I see as a problem with presentation and execution, not the actual system. That someone felt they could just call up their deity and start chatting and demanding answers was a problem with the player, and at least partly the DM for not setting the proper ground rules for how this stuff was going to work in their Realms.
To me, in all previous editions, the rules were just baselines to be modified to suit individual tastes once you got them home... especially where divine magic was concerned. Treating it like on-demand arcane magic with a holy symbol instead of a spellbook wasn't the fault of the system, it was the fault of those who treated it that way. I don't, and won't, deny it could be treated that way, but I do greatly object to the idea that it had to be treated that way. If it was in the Realms, the fault for that lies with the designers and authors, and in no way reflects how I have to treat it at home.
I imagine being granted divine magic is a very high honor in the churches. Most 'priests' would no longer be clerics, only the very important ones. Of course, I also like the idea of favored souls, to use a class example from 3E. So certain individuals may simply be 'born' with holy / unholy power, blessed by a deity while in the womb.
Of course, none of that means that the mortal is going to do -exactly- what the deity wants.
Presumably, it would be a tremendous honor. But it could also set the stage for an ecclessiastic escalation of investing priests, even the unworthy, and setting them loose on your foes, relying on horde tactics to overwhelm. If it can be done, it will be done by some fanatic, or by some overly-naive type who wants everyone to be equal without realizing the disaster that their actions are causing. It just takes one idiot with the system, as I understand it, that they've set up to make the whole thing collapse under its own weight.
My view is based on the understanding that its the churches who control who is invested, not the deity, and if the church doesn't want you to be a cleric, then you won't ever get the ritual to be one, even if the deity demands it (technically anyway), since there's not much the deity can actually do to a rogue cleric besides sending out an enforcer or smoting them where they stand, reducing the deity to uber-thug. As opposed to the previous system, where the god just invested someone with their power and set them loose, without having to rely on mortals to go and find their clergy for them... sorry, but that sounds a lot more mysterious and divine to me than ending up with something like a seminary to train new priests, and hoping that you're getting the best and brightest to come to you instead of the other deity over there.
Better for heirarchal sorts of faiths with a lawful bent, really crap for the chaotic faiths who don't have a centralized structure to them. Or are we presuming that all of the churches have abandoned decentralization and all gone in for the rigid heirarchy and structure of a strongly centralized church? Thanks, but no thanks to that idea...
Punishment by Ao... again... just what, thirty years after the Time of Troubles? And for what, the action of a few stupid deities (read Cyric, Shar, and Tyr), while the rest were pretty much engaged in damage control?
You mean, exactly like last time? :P
ALL of the gods were cast down (well -most- of them) during the Time of Troubles because Bane and Myrkul stole the Tablets of Fate... which of course, turned out to be worthless. This time they caused HUGE problems...
I don't see Ao being happy with it. I could certainly see him taking such an action, especially considering the fact that at the end of the ToT he was determined to make sure that the gods listened more to their worshipers... or whatever it was. It involved worshipers, though. :P
Of course, on the metagame side of things we know why the changes were made. They were made to make FR fit within the core (one core to rule them all, etc, etc.) Plus, unlike previous editions if a 4th Edition Cleric were to lose their ability to cast spells / rituals... you might as well retire the character, it'd be worthless. In 3E you could at the very least pursue another career path.
Why would it be in the best interests of the divine to greatly limit their interactions with the world? Why would reliance on mortals be a good thing? That the divine and the mortal have a symbiotic relationship is unquestionable, but putting them into an almost subservient relationship (at least comparatively to previous) with mortals just strikes me as... counterproductive for the future of the divine. Why bother being a god when you're effectively just a big battery to empower a bunch of mortals with... who you can't even really cut off when they start doing things you don't like?
What better type of punishment?
I utterly fail to see how this makes them mysterious beings... subservient, slightly irrelevant, and effectively powerless to stop abuse of their names by any but indirect means, sure, those I could see those applying to them, but not mysterious. That you could 'pick your gods brain' before I see as a problem with presentation and execution, not the actual system. That someone felt they could just call up their deity and start chatting and demanding answers was a problem with the player, and at least partly the DM for not setting the proper ground rules for how this stuff was going to work in their Realms.
I was generally talking about spells such as Commune. Theoretically, a cleric could simply cast such a spell in 3E and ask, "Hey, is so-and-so a heretic?" And you'd get your yes or no answer. Unless, of course, it was a non-answer like Lathander gave... but it was a heresy he had embraced. So that's a completely different situation.
Let me give another example of a divide within a faith. The church of Oghma became divided after the Time of Troubles when the Grand Patriarch went missing. No one knew what happened to him and several factions developed. Oghma could have easily prevented or ended this by either informing his faithful that the former Grand Patriarch was dead, or by simply naming a new one - either full time or temporarily.
There are many other such divisions. In Kossuth's church you had a divide between the Tendrils of Flame and the Burning Braziers.
I could easily turn many of your complaints around and ask, why must a deity be relegated to the status of administrator? Why shouldn't a deity be more focused on answering prayers and doing whatever it is that deities do all day?
From my prospective to have deities have so much influence in the mortal world it adversely impacts the churches themselves. What is the point of having a High Priest if the deity is going to constantly intervene? Why should political intrigues exist within a church when a deity can step in?
From my view, things working this way puts a strong focus on the mortals and their churches. The deity isn't going to jump in and intervene on a whim, it is up to mortals to solve mortal differences. If there is a heretic or someone abusing the power entrusted to them, then it should be up to the faithful themselves to deal with it. If it is a player doing it, then that creates a wonderful source of conflict that is great and ripe for exploitation by a DM.
Personally, I look at the way Clerics are now set up as being somewhat like Ur-Priests. A ritual is performed to connect them to their god, allowing them to draw their power directly from the deities essence itself. Too many clerics would weaken a deity, and the more powerful a deity is the more clerics he or she would be able to maintain. The rest of the priests are more mundane, without powers, but perhaps have the ability to assist in and conduct rituals.
As for the more chaotic faiths... it changes nothing. They still have temples, shrines and clergy. They still had to train clergy in the past. No one was simply born with intricate knowledge of all the gods, their dogmas, their rituals, rites and other aspects of a faith. Those all had to be taught. So the point about more chaotic faiths having trouble is rather moot.
Of course, all of this comes down to personal preference. For me I like it. It offers a great potential for conflict, and takes the focus away from the gods and puts it on the faithful themselves... which in most matters, that is where it belongs. FR deities have rarely ever intervened heavy handedly, Mystra being one of the exceptions to the rule.
We don't know much about Ao, but I think the ToT speaks volumes for him. Essentially, two deities (Bane and Myrkul) steal a worthless set of stone slabs, and he punishes virtually every single deity for it.
If you work off of that, then this would be the equivalent of a father watching his daughter throw a temper tantrum. In the process she makes a huge mess in her room, throwing stuff on the floor. The father stands in the doorway, annoyed but silent. When the petulant child finally finishes the father simply says, "Now clean up your room. And you're grounded until further notice."
:P
...Personally, I look at the way Clerics are now set up as being somewhat like Ur-Priests. A ritual is performed to connect them to their god, allowing them to draw their power directly from the deities essence itself. Too many clerics would weaken a deity, and the more powerful a deity is the more clerics he or she would be able to maintain. The rest of the priests are more mundane, without powers, but perhaps have the ability to assist in and conduct rituals...
There's a reason that the Ur-priest prestige class is in the Book of Vile Darkness: because what they are doing is evil. Ur-priests steal power, they do so for their own gain and do not support any theology except their own personal wishes. I don't like this idea at all, as it's very non-Realmsian.
There's a reason that the Ur-priest prestige class is in the Book of Vile Darkness: because what they are doing is evil. Ur-priests steal power, they do so for their own gain and do not support any theology except their own personal wishes. I don't like this idea at all, as it's very non-Realmsian.
It isn't what's going on, either. So no worries.
It isn't what's going on, either. So no worries.
Yeah, well... obviously. But I'm not allowed to reply on someone's idea? Geez.
Yeah, well... obviously. But I'm not allowed to reply on someone's idea? Geez.
I did not say, or imply, that you could or could not do anything...?
What I did say, however, was that the comments you quoted are not what is going on in the Realms.
I did not say, or imply, that you could or could not do anything...?
What I did say, however, was that the comments you quoted are not what is going on in the Realms.
Neither did I, and neither did Mel. He said that's how he envisioned it for his own, and I said "that's not for me, and here's why...".
Following me through multiple threads just to harass me is, well... harassment. Please refer to the CoC.
You mean, exactly like last time? :P
ALL of the gods were cast down (well -most- of them) during the Time of Troubles because Bane and Myrkul stole the Tablets of Fate... which of course, turned out to be worthless. This time they caused HUGE problems...
I don't see Ao being happy with it. I could certainly see him taking such an action, especially considering the fact that at the end of the ToT he was determined to make sure that the gods listened more to their worshipers... or whatever it was. It involved worshipers, though. :P
Of course, on the metagame side of things we know why the changes were made. They were made to make FR fit within the core (one core to rule them all, etc, etc.) Plus, unlike previous editions if a 4th Edition Cleric were to lose their ability to cast spells / rituals... you might as well retire the character, it'd be worthless. In 3E you could at the very least pursue another career path.
Zoinking the tablets was the excuse given for the ToT, not the actual reason, which I would hope you know by now :P
The actions and abuses of the gods up 'til then was hardly exemplary if one believes the histories, and I see little reason not to, so the ToT was indeed a punishment for the collective "pantheon", for lack of a better word, and their litany of wrongs. As to the metagame side of things... that just says to me that 4e takes away a lot of possibilities for stories that might be told, and locks us into particular directions for what we can do with it. Yeah, that's a definite improvement... :P
What better type of punishment?
Oh, I dunno... making them clean up the freaking mess comes to mind offhand...
I was generally talking about spells such as Commune. Theoretically, a cleric could simply cast such a spell in 3E and ask, "Hey, is so-and-so a heretic?" And you'd get your yes or no answer. Unless, of course, it was a non-answer like Lathander gave... but it was a heresy he had embraced. So that's a completely different situation.
And the deity is obligated to answer those questions why? Oh, wait, they aren't... not unless they, and the DM, want them to be... weird, huh?
Let me give another example of a divide within a faith. The church of Oghma became divided after the Time of Troubles when the Grand Patriarch went missing. No one knew what happened to him and several factions developed. Oghma could have easily prevented or ended this by either informing his faithful that the former Grand Patriarch was dead, or by simply naming a new one - either full time or temporarily.
There are many other such divisions. In Kossuth's church you had a divide between the Tendrils of Flame and the Burning Braziers.
I'm well aware of both actually. I don't particularly see a problem with either of those, given the sheer breadth that the portfolios cover and the variety of interpretations that can exist for them. Maybe Oghma just didn't want to bother with a Grand Patriarch, since he didn't feel anyone was worthy, or maybe he was just trying to spur competitive growth. Good way to introduce some mystery into the deity there, rather than just having them provide instant answers. I thought you liked heresies and the like... ;)
When it comes down to it, there doesn't have to be a problem with divisions within a faith, nor does it have to give rise to conflict. Treat them the way you might Jesuits versus Dominicans versus Benedictines within the Catholic Church and you solve the problem if you feel there has to be a firm sense of orthodoxy in there somewhere, or just perhaps accept that some faiths don't necessarily lend themselves to rancorous divisions, and can co-exist quite harmoniously.
I could easily turn many of your complaints around and ask, why must a deity be relegated to the status of administrator? Why shouldn't a deity be more focused on answering prayers and doing whatever it is that deities do all day?
From my prospective to have deities have so much influence in the mortal world it adversely impacts the churches themselves. What is the point of having a High Priest if the deity is going to constantly intervene? Why should political intrigues exist within a church when a deity can step in?
Well... for starters, how does having the ability to zap or cut-off some fool for abusing the abilities you grant count as administration? They're supposed to be paying attention to their worshippers, not letting them do whatever the hells they want and smiling as they start using celestial power to start summoning hordes of Tanar'ri to hang out and barbecue with. Moving right along...
Perhaps not all of the Churches actually have high priests, beyond the leader of a temple... perhaps they don't bother with most of the little things, and don't micromanage things like they were McNamara, god of beancounting. Maybe they do just hang out and let the mortals do most of the working out of details, while they handle the 'big picture' stuff. There's plenty of room for political intrigue under the previous system, I'd say even more, its just that there's more rules involved when it comes to upholding certain boundaries of ethics and morality... which just makes the game more challenging for the truly ambitious.
From my view, things working this way puts a strong focus on the mortals and their churches. The deity isn't going to jump in and intervene on a whim, it is up to mortals to solve mortal differences. If there is a heretic or someone abusing the power entrusted to them, then it should be up to the faithful themselves to deal with it. If it is a player doing it, then that creates a wonderful source of conflict that is great and ripe for exploitation by a DM.
Why would they before? Why wasn't it up to the mortals, for the most part, before? To my mind, cutting off someone's power was the last stage of the issue. Presumably, there were prior "interventions" from the Church long before the excommunication happens... its not the sort of thing that just up and happens out of the blue for no reason. Beyond that, even under the new system, is there a system for excommunication that involves stripping someone of their ability to cast spells, short of just killing them, available to churches or deities? If not, well... that problem and oversight should speak for itself.
Personally, I look at the way Clerics are now set up as being somewhat like Ur-Priests. A ritual is performed to connect them to their god, allowing them to draw their power directly from the deities essence itself. Too many clerics would weaken a deity, and the more powerful a deity is the more clerics he or she would be able to maintain. The rest of the priests are more mundane, without powers, but perhaps have the ability to assist in and conduct rituals.
I couldn't stand Ur-Priests myself... I found them to be an abomination on a deeply philosophical level, well deserving of their placement in the BoVD.
Beyond that, I see litle reason why a deity would open up a connection to a being that was ultimately governed by their followers. It makes absolutely no sense that they would figuratively bend over and ask to be buggered by their followers without having some means of controlling and cutting off the valve, so to speak. It just defies logic and reason to me, as a mechanic and as a concept.
As for the more chaotic faiths... it changes nothing. They still have temples, shrines and clergy. They still had to train clergy in the past. No one was simply born with intricate knowledge of all the gods, their dogmas, their rituals, rites and other aspects of a faith. Those all had to be taught. So the point about more chaotic faiths having trouble is rather moot.
Born with? I'd suspect that the Favored Soul puts lie to that notion that they aren't... ;)
As to clergy, that depends on how you view things. My own view is that dogma, rituals, and rites could all be learned... but weren't necessary to function as a cleric. Faith in the deity and an inherent understanding of what the deity stands for is pretty much all I think are actually necessary. All that other crap is necessary for functioning within a church, but not for acting as an agent of your god. They are two very seperate and quite different things. If there is no established heirarchy, or system of temples or shrines, the faith is quite simply screwed unless they adopt such a system, and definitely puts the 'organized' churches on top of the pile when it comes down to it. Just consider Umberlee, who generally didn't bother much with temples and shrines... how's that sort of requirement going to affect her, considering she didn't really have any centers of power, at least that we know of.
Of course, all of this comes down to personal preference. For me I like it. It offers a great potential for conflict, and takes the focus away from the gods and puts it on the faithful themselves... which in most matters, that is where it belongs. FR deities have rarely ever intervened heavy handedly, Mystra being one of the exceptions to the rule.
The focus was only on the gods if you let it be. I do agree that its a matter of personal preference, though I'd say Shar and Selune were much more heavy-handed than Mystra ever was. Of course I don't think Mystra was heavy-handed, just over exposed to us from a meta-game perspective. Most folks in Faerun wouldn't even realize she was meddling unless they were directly involved, ala El and the other Chosen, and not always even then. Given Mask's treatment of Cale, what little I know of it, it seemed to be on about the same level and degree, just a bit more subtley done, as befits the god of rogues. That suggests to me that they (the powers) all were meddlers to some extent, we just didn't get the details of most of it.
Hmmm... that did turn into a much longer post than I expected. Oops...
I don't assume he was unaware. I assume he let it happen and then punished them afterward. :P
We don't know much about Ao, but I think the ToT speaks volumes for him. Essentially, two deities (Bane and Myrkul) steal a worthless set of stone slabs, and he punishes virtually every single deity for it.
:P
Sure, but that, as far as we know, happened once, and the main difference was partially because some deities thought to usurp his power. It does not mean Ao would react like that every time the deities or mortals make a mess - they had been doing that long before and he let it pass. When Lathander tried to all but rearrange reality for everyone (the Dawn Cataclysm), when Karsus decided that, hey, godhood is just a 12th level spell, when the Dead Three ran roughshod over half a dozen minor deities - as far as I know he just let it pass. To make him go all strict and punish left and right for minor things again would be somewhat uncharacteristic.
Well, at the end of it all it's up to the individual DM and party. Still, for me the changes in 4E are a bit uncharacteristic to FR, and it was not necessary to give the whole pantheon an Extreme Makeover (TM) just so a minor fluff rule could be enforced in a variant setting. When 3.x FR made all clerics, deities, rangers and paladins worship a deity, did that break the game?
No. There are no more 'paladin traps', which can only be a good thing...
What do you mean by that?
...and so long to Deus Ex Machinas and more things to draw attention away from the PCs.
Yeah, they should make a setting that has only PCs and nothing else.
I will agree that it is -very- different than what came before, and maybe isn't completely FR-ish... but that doesn't mean it couldn't work in the setting. I think the whole Ao punishment angle works as a good explanation.
I personally like it because it creates a degree of separation between the deity and the church. I don't like to think about the deities as characters, but more as abstract beings of fantastic cosmological power. Mortals may interpret their deities in various ways, of course, but the truth may or may not be very different.
I like the fact that you can have five different individuals worshiping the same deity, and then having each individual interpret that deity differently.... and nobody knowing for certain who is right or wrong.
I am somewhere between how Eberron treats their deities and the way they are done in classic FR. I like the concept of gods providing some sort of display of their existence through various manifestations, and giving guidance to mortals via strange and cryptic dream visions. However, I loathe it when deities are seen as open books.
In essence, I see both sides as an extreme way of viewing it. I'm in the middle somewhere. :P
If I had to come down on one side or another, I'd come down on the side of the way Eberron does it, because I dislike deities that are overly meddlesome and directly impact the world. In my mind, the focus should always be upon the mortals and not the gods. Abstraction and distance is (in my opinion) the far superior method.
fail the test
Why can't such things be relegated to mortal servitors?
There is all this talk of sending this or that planar being to smite an unruly cleric... there is no reason in my mind that mortals cannot handle such business themselves, and they should (perhaps even more so than the deity) have the greatest motivation to act.
Avengers in the hierarchy of clergies would be the prime candidates for recieving such visions in the 15th century realms. Their "downtime" would be filled by feverish prayer sessions in the hope of getting a glimpse of individuals opposing or undermining the faith. Most of those visions would likely still be quite unfathomable and be prone to misinterpretations though. Thats were the avenger clergy go for advice to their superiors, like invokers and clerics of higher level that can interpret the dreams of their subjects. Ambitious and malevolent clerics would make misuse of these divine hitmen and promote their own agendas by twisting the visions into a shape of their liking.
Divine divination magic can ferret out a lot of potential enemies of and heretics within a clergy. I can see whole sections of clergies devoted to employing these magics to ensure a proper way of spreading the faith.
I also want to add something else to this debate. We know that in classic FR that deities delegate a great deal of stuff to "servitors," essentially divinely ordained planar agents.
Why can't such things be relegated to mortal servitors?
There is all this talk of sending this or that planar being to smite an unruly cleric... there is no reason in my mind that mortals cannot handle such business themselves, and they should (perhaps even more so than the deity) have the greatest motivation to act.
No reason they couldn't be... would fit nicely with Avengers and Paladins, presuming I understand their general purposes correctly, and what their roles in the various churches might be. I just have a problem with the deity allowing a corrupt individual access to their power... I know the mechanical reasons for it, I just find the reasons unacceptably stupid as applied concepts. I get that DMs have abused things like that in the past, but now it seems to be swinging around too much to the player abuse side of things if you ask me. Overcorrection I guess... but extremes bother me, so...
My own personal take on the Realms deities was pretty much that they worked exactly the way you mentioned in your previous post... that they could and often were viewed differently by each of their faithful, that orthodoxy was fairly rare in most churches, that things were much more free and open to interpretation with them, with lots of little cults of personality going on within each faith. Maybe it comes from not reading novels, but I can't say I've ever viewed the Faerunian deities as open books to their worshippers or clerics... by the same token, they never struck me as being modelled after the Greek pantheon either, though I know they supposedly were. They've never come off that way to me I guess... again, could be lack of novels at work there.
Exactly. That is more or less how I envision it working in 4E FR. If you've got a cleric that the deity doesn't approve of running around, the deity is going to try and warn other members of the faith. That warning most likely will be subject to interpretation.
To give an example: A priest may have a dream vision, in which he clearly sees another priest of the faith. The priest is surrounded by a crowd of people, and a skull and crossbones appears clearly over his head. When the mysterious priest makes eye contact, the flesh on his face has begun to rot away, and maggots eat at the remaining flesh.
What message is the deity trying to send? Is the deity saying that he wants that particular priest dead, or is he warning of the impending death of the priest? It depends on the individual receiving the vision.
If the priest in question happens to strongly disagree with what the other priest is teaching or doing, he may say, "My deity wishes for me to kill him, to end his heresy." On the other hand, if he agrees with the teachings of the other priest, he may feel that his deity is compelling him to protect the priest and prevent his death.
On the other hand, you could have the individual uncertain... and he could go to another priest who dislikes the priest in the dream vision, who then takes it as a sign that the deity is validating his / her feelings, and that the priest in question should be slain.
In reality, the deity may have simply been warning that the priest in question was going to kill someone. (Hence the skull and crossbones over his head.) As a result of that action he himself was going to be slain, and he wanted the priest to stop the other priest from carrying out that action.
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Stigger-
I would say that the novels and how the deities have been portrayed in them is in large part the reason for my current viewpoint. In my mind a being as powerful as a deity is virtually incomprehensible to understand. It would be the equivalent of an ant trying to contemplate the complexities of the human mind. A deity is simply on an entirely different playing field all together, intellectually, mentally and in terms of existence.
In classic FR they are treated like characters. Essentially they are epic level mortals times a hundred. To me it just doesn't feel right. A deity in many ways should be completely alien to mortals because they literally exist on a higher level of understanding. I do not have a problem, and even like the fact that mortals may reduce them down to simplistic terms that they can understand. It makes sense for them to do that. Yet, canonically, the gods have in large part been turned into huge jokes because they have been reduced down to such a primitive level of existence.
I realize that the way they are portrayed is closer to Ed Greenwood's vision of the Realms. I really don't dispute that, he was and still is going for a Greek like pantheon, in which the deities themselves are actual characters. If you read a Greek myth, Ed Greenwood essentially (in the Realms) wants that to be something that actually happened – not a myth told by the faithful.
For me personally, on a fundamental level, it raises too many red flags and problems. It is largely the same problems that ultra high epic magic introduces. In the Realms we have what amounts to semi-traditional late medieval warfare. Yet, if we approach things logically we know that could never actually exist due to wizards existing in such large numbers, as well as epic level adventurers and what not.
No one actually sat down and thought about the implications of such things in the Realms. They were going for a feel and a theme, logic be damned. That is not a bad thing, necessarily, but on a personal gut level I don't like it. My brain begins to scream at me, "That doesn't make sense! Illogical! Illogical! Make it work!"
And so, you get a crazy person like me sitting down for several hours trying to force a square peg into a circular hole that just doesn't fit. :P
So much of what I do Realms related is simply trying to make it all work on a logical and rational level.
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On another note, Stigger, you said:
I get that DMs have abused things like that in the past, but now it seems to be swinging around too much to the player abuse side of things if you ask me. Overcorrection I guess... but extremes bother me, so...
A player can only continue abusing something if a DM allows them to, the DM is responsible for ensuring that there are consequences to a players actions. If a player is blatantly (and knowingly) abusing their power... well, there are tons of ways a DM can deal with it. Obviously, you'd start with dream visions from the deity. If "warnings" failed to work, that's when they'd run into political trouble with their counter-parts in the clergy, and if that failed to work then that's when the DM ensures that the deity sends out the big guns to try and kill the character.
From a metagame perspective such an action should not come as a surprise to the player. By the time they are being hunted, it should have been clear on an OOC level, that they were getting on the wrong side of things.
As to the rest of it... I don't accept the Greek Pantheon approach, as it wouldn't really work with things in my mind, regardless of what Ed envisioned or not. Divinity should just never work that way to my mind, and while I know a lot of people just love the Greek/Roman approach to things when it comes to gods... its not a formula that spells long-term survival of the pantheon or culture, even with actual gods behind it. There's a good reason monotheism eventually won out in the Western world, despite my dislike of what it became.
By the same token though, the magic in the Realms doesn't bother me much, due to the setup they've been given, as in a load of selfish pricks who don't do much that doesn't benefit them directly... even evident among the War Wizards to some extent, whom I consider, along with the Spellguard of Silverymoon and the Watch Wizards of Waterdeep, to be something of a societal aberration when it comes to spellcasters. A collection of the ultimate individualists trying to work together cooperatively is just sort of bound to fail sort of thing... which is why I don't really have a problem with the set up of things. Spellcaster society just hasn't evolved to the level needed to form an efficient, coherent contribution to society, with only a few exceptions... that makes sense to me given the widespread clinging to the master/apprentice relationship when it comes to magical education. I just don't see spellcasters getting their collective acts together until large, cohesive schools/academies start and survive more than a few years, ala Hogwarts (the only model that comes to mind that doesn't rely on the master-apprentice dynamic that I'm aware of offhand.).
Here's the answer from himself:
Hello again, all. I bring you once more the words of Ed, this time in response to this spanking-new (ahem, BAD Hooded One! Bad! We'll have to spank . . . oh. Ahem again.) query from Bladewind: "Ahum. Pretty tough question. Ed, how much influence do oracles have on politics in for example Cormyr? Are the people who get visions taken seriously by rulers? How much support can a supposed prophet of Savras have in a small village? Is spouting fear inducing prohesies a crime?"
Ed replies:
A FEW hermit and rural oracles are still taken very seriously in Faerun, particularly "new ones," whom most folk believe are truly the direct mouthpieces of deities speaking through them. Most long-established and temple-based oracles are only heeded by clergy (who view them as the deity guiding and critiquing their work) and the most devout lay worshippers), because they have been so wrong or so "right but overly cryptic or woefully partial or miscasting/twisting the truth" before.
So in Cormyr (and most other places), oracles would be viewed as alerts or warnings, but no more (i.e. they would NOT bring existing policies or projects to a crashing halt, but could work to 'steer' future efforts or ongoing efforts). Oracles themselves are generally viewed as well-meaning, honest folk (until spies or third parties prove or strongly suggest they are otherwise). A small village could well believe an oracle of Savras utterly, but not to the point of executing people or burning down major buildings or openly and repeatedly breaking major laws or offending against the rights of other faiths (including Azuth and other "direct rivals"). No, spouting fear-inducing prophecies isn't a crime (though deliberately concoting false prophecies and passing them off as divinely-inspired is), but uttering such prophecies will, over time, get the prophet largely ignored - - and will swiftly lead responsible clergy and local governing officials to denounce the prophet to the extent of "Don't follow what he/she says, but turn to the temple clergy for interpretations! He/she cannot help but distort what the god is trying to say through them!" (And this would be widely accepted by the populace, not seen first and foremost as a cover-up of the oracle's "truth.")
So saith Ed. Eagerly ongoing creator of the Realms.
We can look forward to many more such Realmslore replies in 2009, I hope.
love to all,
THO
You're wrong about the whole wizard / apprentice thing being the norm. Virtually every major region of Faerûn, within a large city (typically the capital city) has a college like school that teaches arcane magic. Only in the more rural areas does the wizard / apprentice thing seem to exist at all.
Waterdeep and Silverymoon immediately come to mind as strong examples of this, but you could also lump in some others as well. Here are a few off the top of my head: Luskan, the Zhents, the Red Wizards, a school in Impiltur, some places in the Wizards Reach, the Cowled Wizards in Amn, and I am sure there are many others as well.
If nothing else, you cannot deny that the Red Wizards, the Zhents, Luskan, Cormyr, Waterdeep and Silverymoon would all make extensive use of arcane magic in their military. And we all know that in previous editions one powerful wizard was greater than a hundred (a thousand?) trained mundane soldiers.
Although, to be perfectly fair, many of the problems with warfare in FR has much to do with power scaling and levels than with wizards or arcane magic.
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On your other main point...
As to the rest of it... I don't accept the Greek Pantheon approach, as it wouldn't really work with things in my mind, regardless of what Ed envisioned or not. Divinity should just never work that way to my mind, and while I know a lot of people just love the Greek/Roman approach to things when it comes to gods... its not a formula that spells long-term survival of the pantheon or culture, even with actual gods behind it.
On this, we are in strong agreement. It simply does not make sense the way it is portrayed. Which is why I've embraced a different way of looking / handling it.
As to things like the Red Wizards, Hosttower, Zhents, etcetera... they always struck me more as finishing schools more than initial-learning academies, with the possible exception of the Hosttower. Silverymoon's Lady's College was an exception, rather than a rule I think. Everything in 2e's Pages from the Mages suggested, or possibly explicitly stated (it's been a while), that every time an academy was formed, some cabal of mages or other got threatened and blew it up. Certainly places like Almraiven have a few schools, three I think offhand, but those were more a handful of wizards who pooled their resources for training apprentices rather than a serious attempt at academic streamlining of a magical university. Silverymoon was/is a serious go at forming something like the University of Edinburgh for mages, but it was pretty unique in that respect.
Certainly schools existed, Blackstaff Tower and the Wand's Villa come to mind, but in the case of Blackstaff Tower it was hardly a university setting, and was pretty informal (generously I think) by modern academic standards, while the Wand's was more of a family business rather than a institute of learning and knowledge.
I don't dispute that many nations had spellcaster presences in their militaries though, some extensively so. My point was that it was so disorganized and haphazard that it was blunted in its effects by and large. Rather like Admiral Kurita's (think it was him anyway) sloppy general charge at Leyte Gulf, where he was driven off by Sprague's much smaller American force because of his lack of coordination, despite having the American's outgunned, outnumbered, and just plain outclassed.
Most of the things I have seen point towards spellcasters regarding themselves as individuals first, who have no need to coordinate or support each other, who approach combat in groups of mages as an "every-man-for-himself" affair, rather than as a disciplined and cohesive fighting unit. You don't see massed volleys of fireballs being lobbed of simultaneously because most spellcasters don't seem to think that way, not because they're incapable of doing so. They think in terms of "Me", rather than "We", and spellcasters who do otherwise are the exception, not the norm.
You don't see massed volleys of fireballs being lobbed of simultaneously because most spellcasters don't seem to think that way, not because they're incapable of doing so. They think in terms of "Me", rather than "We", and spellcasters who do otherwise are the exception, not the norm.
That statement goes to the heart of my thinking. One wizard is powerful, but two, three, four, five - or more - working together as a unit is devastating. No one can tell me, with a straight face, that after all the thousands of years on Faerûn that wizards would not have figured that out. That governments would not have worked to specifically train and utilize wizards in their military.
However, again, as I said in my previous post, the issue here is not wizards themselves, but the system in which they operate. D&D is designed to be a skirmish game, where two small groups do battle. It is not a wargame.
That is the root of the problem, really. The setting did not bother to take into consideration the rules under which it is played. It is as if Physicists simply ignored the existence of gravity.
...now... back to the topic of gods and their clerics. :P
Doubt i.e. losing faith used to be lethal and could mean an early ticket to his or her god for a cleric on a battlefield. I think this certainly is a dynamic that will be missed with the investiture mechanic as is. Losing ones faith or redeeming oneself can prove to be powerful stories.