Enlightenment
Poor Cleric. The dude tries to show a little multicultural awareness (a rarity for a dwarf) and catches a beating for it. There ain’t no justice, I tells ya.
The many worlds of Dungeons & Dragons are odd places, theologically speaking. On the one hand you can choose to devote yourself to a deity, gaining a number of sweet spiritual powers in the process. Alternatively, you can follow the way of the monk, attaining physical perfection and purity of spirit through discipline and exercise. In both cases you wind up with some very real, very demonstrable powers. A cleric can heal the afflicted and summon angels to do his bidding. A monk can chug poison like Gatorade, snatch arrows in mid-flight, and even attain immortality at high level. Plus they’ve got the rock hard abs that Friar Tuck just can’t match.
All of this leads me to wonder how anyone is supposed to choose a philosophy in D&D world. An evangelist from Earth might talk to you about Morality and Truth and similar, but a D&D style practitioner can show you literal miracles. Watching wounds close through the power of the gods is pretty convincing stuff, after all. The problem is that the other dude in the temple across town has some impressive ki powers of his own. My guess is that there are extremely competitive job fairs in these settings. I imagine that they turn into elaborate fighting tournaments by the first afternoon.
Question of the day then. If you found yourself in a fantasy world where multiple different philosophies produce miraculous results, which would you choose? How would you choose?
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I’ve never been much a religious person myself, but if I were to devote myself to one, I’d rather it be one for the people. A guardian, fair and true. The embodiment of judgement. One who will stand up for their followers, and those who dwell in it’s domain.
Meanwhile my brother highly believes in luck in real life, so it’s no doubt he’d be devoted to Tymora… Then again, I’m pretty sure he already is.
I’ve always liked playing with the idea of gods playing active roles in the world they dwell in. 10 major gods, once mortals from a time before magic, shaped the ways of magic over the millenia. Now, they spend their days governing over the regions they claim as their own, less so religious entities, and more as forces of power that make the world what it is.
So as with Wildstag below, it’s less about the philosophies themselves than the preferences and personality of the individual?
Choose based off of the doctrine. For example, suppose you are a dwarven athlete that travels from city to city competing in races. Sure you might worship Torag, but he may not approve too much of your rather untraditional wandering.
However, Kurgess might be just the guy that is the exemplar of all the kinds of things you yourself promote. Sportsmanship, strength, and celebration.
So race or culture dictates the “traditional choice,” but the individual’s interests are the determining factor? Seems reasonable.
Honestly, in the world where Gods are real and walk the earth with everybody, you do the same thing that we all know Europe did before Christianity. You pick your favorite and praise them the highest, but you don’t need to sit in one camp all the time. Recognize and give praise to all of the Gods, and hope that they see you and will bestow their praise upon you.
Welcome to the comments, Alyx!
A sort of pagan Pascal’s Wager then? That’s definitely a rational choice. I was always bothered by the idea of worshiping all the gods in a pantheon type setting though, figuring that some of them might be evil, personally distasteful, etc. That’s why I always found it interesting that in the Golarion setting the evil gods and the good all have months named after them. They all enjoy wide-spread honor, and (unless I’m getting my lore wrong) it’s because they all banded together to overcome a single destructive threat (Rovagug). As a solution to the “pantheon problem,” that one worked well for me.
Well I was thinking less ‘hedge your bets’ and more that each God will oversee a certain aspect of life. Some are for courage, death, farming harvests. So you appeal to the one who oversees the aspect of life you find yourself in. If you are a farmer, there is no real reason to call out to Tiamat because that’s just not in your sphere of life, just like the traveling Cleric wouldn’t pray for fields to get more rain unless there was a famine on the horizon.
“Sphere of life” is an interesting phrase. It echoes D&D’s cleric domain system. I guess it depends on which aspect of life you deal with most frequently. In contemporary terms, a truck driver might keep a St. Christopher medal on his key chain while a police officer would have St. Michael on his.
Not even a Pascal’s Wager. The ancient greek gods, for example were not very… nice.
You worshipped and propitiated their demands with gifts and sacrifice because they *demanded* it. The evil gods are the same. You donate to the plague god so that he won’t become annoyed and TAKE NOTICE of you.
Leaving milk out for the fairies then? I can dig that. It’s sort of a “the god is the virgin-eating dragon” setup. I bet you could do a pretty cool game where the PCs have to go and kill the local “god” so that the people can get some relief from the sacrifices.
You pray to Good gods and gods of desirable portfolios (good luck, wealth, love, etc) to invite the good things they have dominion over into your life, and you pray to Evil gods and gods of undesirable portfolios (bad luck, disasters, destruction, etc) in order to appease them and hopefully steer their nastiness away from your life.
For example, in the Forgotten Realms, while an adventurer might worship Tymora as the patron of good luck, he would still occasionally make offerings to Beshaba in order to keep her portfolio of bad luck far away from him. Sailors might not worship Umberlee, the Evil goddess of the sea and patron of many evil sea monsters, but he would probably pay respect to her before leaving on an ocean voyage to try and prevent some maritime disaster from befalling the ship en route.
Also a solid solution.
Now I’m beginning to feel like I need to do some proper anthropology and ask IRL polytheistic folks how they deal with the less savory deities. I’m willing to be reality is stranger than fiction in a lot of cases.
Im kinda lazy personally but i like helping others so i feel like i would become a cleric instead of a wizard. Too lazy for the grueling hours of study while being a cleric gives you quite literal ways of helping the sick and wounded. And like you said, gods are an actual thing so you can actually get into the meat of guidance and shit. I’d be a wandering cleric personally, probably of whatever good aligned deity that supports helping and healing others wherever needed
Welcome to the comic, Nitro!
For me, one of the coolest things about D&D clerics is that they don’t actually need a god. From the 3.5 SRD: “If a cleric is not devoted to a particular deity, he still selects two domains to represent his spiritual inclinations and abilities.” Makes you wonder whether the gods are actually granting the powers of goodness and healing, or if there are universal principles beyond even the pantheon. Anywho, my point is that your “wandering do-gooder” archetype becomes even more compelling (at least in my opinion) when he does what he does for his own reasons.
Coming more from Pathfinder than DND, though this is all speculation anyways, but the way I usually see that work is that basically they promote their ideals and a Deity or two that covers those ideals just kinda, like, picks them up anonymously.
Now I’m just imagining police captain deities.
“You’re a loose canon, Cleric! I’ve got massive damage to the prime material, mortals on the prayerophone night and day… You know Patriarch Deity is going to be on my ass. Me-dammit! You’re a good divine vessel, but I’m not covering you next time.”
Student: Master, The town cleric says a perfect body wouldn’t improve my immortal soul!
Master: He is wrong.
Student: But how could you know?
Master: Because I’ve achieved physical perfection. These hips do not lie.
Honestly, I think I would be sorta afraid of most gods in a fantasy setting. CR 30+ outsiders able to party-wipe by farting in your general direction are basically scariest thing ever. Then again, self made deities like Nethys or Irori do embody the ideals I hold very near and dear to my heart, so its a pretty easy choice. Unfortunately, I’m probably to obstinate to pay lip service if there weren’t any gods that wren’t in line with what I am. Once, I played a paladin and my gm saying “Annnd you fell” very nearly became a running joke.
Those hips have a permanent zone of truth effect. No save.
It would be interesting. I’ll admit I do like my games to have a little more divine influence but my favorite games actually have little interaction with deities at all.
Has for myself, I would probably be that person who worships the good deities in general and ‘thanking’ the evil deities for challenging me to be a better person then I was yesterday. That said I’d still like to make the evil deities sit in their corners every time one of them acts out.
“The evil deities” is an interesting concept. It stems from D&D, but it’s got its roots in The Iliad. There you’ve got Zeus telling Ares that that he is the god most hateful to him, but the war god isn’t evil as such. In a setting based on balance (i.e. Good v. Evil, Law v. Chaos), does it makes sense to tell ANY god to go sit in the corner?
What I’m getting at is this. If there’s a cosmic balance between good and evil, what does it look like when the good gods act out? Why might they need to go sit in their corner for a while?
I would suppose that for a ‘good’ aligned god to need a sitting down would be when they start to impose their vision of perfection on all of the mortals and leaving no room for people to grow and become more than they currently are. The other time would be if a god were to start ‘bending’ the rules for the purpose of gaining greater powers.
If your familiar with El Goonish Shive, the god-like Immortals have a set of rules they have to follow and when an immortal breaks a rule all of the other immortals are magically made aware of it. This allows for all of the Immortals to keep each other in line with in reason.
I probably would ignore the issue entirely. Unless there’s a god specifically of magic in the setting. Because it’d be the only thing I’d really care much about and I’d still probably forget my prayers most of the time and just have as much fun with the magic as I could.
Of course in a setting where gods are super powerful and certainly THERE and sometimes people can become gods and the only major downside is that there would still be a handful of peers who are jerks… Really isn’t it self-defeating to worship any and alert them to that fact that you plan to join their ranks someday? Even if you don’t succeed, there doesn’t seem to be any reason to aim your sights any lower.
I subscribe to a subreddit call /r/WhoWouldWin. It’s mostly full of schoolyard stuff like “Deadshot vs. Captain America,” but sometimes it produces a truly interesting idea. One of these is the extremely powerful “Rational Man with a Shotgun.” I think you would approve of his methodology.
https://www.reddit.com/r/respectthreads/comments/32e0qx/respect_blake_cobalt_the_rational_man_with_a/
I do indeed approve.
I’d have 2 methods to determine which god I chose. First, if the god (or one of their clerics) saved me from death or otherwise did something amazing to help me, I’d probably follow them.
Second, whichever one offers me the best deal… what do you mean that sounds more like a devil than a God?… Asmodeus is a god… hey warlocks are people too you know!
I was talking about this idea in another forum and the idea of the “divine free market” popped up. I guess “the invisible hand” also comes with smiting powers.
I’d study a bit of magic like an Arcane Trickster does, then try to put it to clever use. A little talent and a little hard work seem like a much better solution than years of physical/mental training or religious devotion in my eyes.
Ever read the tale of the industrious rogue? I think you two would get along.
https://1d4chan.org/wiki/Tale_of_an_Industrious_Rogue,_Part_I
You worship all, and offer extra attention as the need arises in you day to day life. You honor them all… But, if you need healing, you ask for Pelor’s aid. Gonna commit murder… You get the point.
All the gods? There’s something like 850 of those silly things!
http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/3.5e_Deities
Can’t I just give at the Universal Life Temple and call it a day?
That would amount to the god(dess) getting a nondescript anonymous e-mail that somebody send them something. Would that encourage that deity to do something for you? No, only with personal attention can you get the best results. And no, you do not need to do something for all 850 of them. How often do you need something from the Assassin god anyway, as a farmer….?
Depends on how you go about pest removal.
In the Greyhawk setting I’m partial to Zagyg (the demigod of eccentric geniuses), and Murlynd (the demigod of paladins that are the character from “Have Gun, Will Travel”)
I have never wanted to try out the Greyhawk setting quite so badly as I do right now.
This is either very hard, or incredibly easy. Very hard if you can only choose one thing, as the monodeity of Judaism\Christianity\Islam has ingrained in our view of religion and deities. Or you just go to the appropriate temple that fulfils your need when you have that need: Healing at the temple for the goddess of healing, rain for your crops at the temple for the thunder\rain god, protection during a journey at the temple of the god of trade and travel… That is how most polytheistic societies worked and work. You shop what you need, as the gods are there to fulfil their part of the contract after you fulfilled yours by offering\dedicating something. And of course some gods are more likeable then others.
Well sure. You have holidays and such for everyone. But the game demands that you’ve got to choose to be the “cleric of X god.” Otherwise it’s too hard to remember what all your several hundred domain powers do.
Well, go for the richest temple, or the one with the largest clientele. After all, being a priest is just another job, at least in the original sense. Thanks to our mono-deity brainwashing it is percieved differently nowadays, but priests did not have to beleive in the gods, as long as the rituals were performed, and the donations came in.
But if you have to choose one, then healing, crop and livestock blessing and adverse weather removal are high on the list of thinks most pre-modern societies would want from their priests and\or gods. And that would also ensure you get donations and such, so it keeps you fed. Not much need for an assasin god, so not much money, or other goods donated, so poor priests.