mangel wrote:How is heresy treated in the realms! From priests that is, since priests with radically diffrent views from the norm appear to still be granted spells!
I think this question has to be answered in two frames of reference - 1) heresy in the Realms, and 2) heresy as it would relate to our game on the server.
1. In the Realms each god's church has different chapters/bases of operation/churches, etc. That are often influenced by each region's geography, language, culture, and other factors. A church of Helm in Cormyr will be very different than a sister branch in Mulholland, for example. Each region will have an influence on the focus of the god's message/will and may even appear to be at odds with themselves. Unless a major tenet of the god's core portfolio of beliefs was breached, I think that visiting high officials from other church branches might be given some lee-way in terms of application of their faith. They may be asked to explain and in a bad scenario, leave, but heresy in the Realms, in terms of a cleric getting/not getting their spells would have less to do with ecclesiastical differences, and more to do with betraying their god on a more personal level. Once an acolyte learns the gods core value system and prays and is granted spells based on that (as a sign of divine favour) as her relationship with that deity (seeking their diving guidance) grows so do the spells/power granted. The more devout (and higher level the chracater gets) the more narrow the path in terms of lenience when it comes to incorrect application of the deities will. To whom much is given much is expected, and failure to adhere to the god's laws on a personal level in terms of their relationship with the god, would result in a loss of powers and could have them branded a heretic.
2. Heresy on the server is a lot harder to define. A priestess of Lloth in the Realms would never consider attacking or harming a spider, yet in our UD there are hostile spiders and the priestess must kill it or flee from it. The semantics of the game do not allow certain things like a druid using a fire based spell on a monster that ends up catching the entire forest on fire and burning it down; there is a flash of fire, the monster dies, the flames die out. In the Realms you could argue that fire-based spell touched off a grassfire that destroys an ancient forest... certainly a heretical act. There is also no easy game machenism that would allow a DM for example to judge a chatacters behaviour and refuse to allow them access to spells based on heresy. Generally this type of thing only comes to our attention though guild channels, or poor RP that is reported to us and we talk to the player(s) involved, but generally there has to be some breach of the rules for us to act, or a gross out of character action - good character does evil acts, evil character is going out of their way to be good, etc. There are also lots of behind-the-scenes things going on where an evil priest might have to do good deeds in order for them not to be found out where the ends justify the means. The game has limits to what cause-effect actions can happen because even with the great DM team we have, we cannot be everywhere all the time and often something viewed (for the purpose of this thread) as heresy by one might be justified by another as reasonable in terms of their character and how they role play their faith.
Players who do not play their character sheets often get a friendly reminder that they need to, but proving heresy is generally left for the players to police amongst themselves unless there is metagaming, godmoding, or rule violations.
