Baldur's Gate : The Sword Coast Chronicles : NWN2 Persistent World

Ravial wrote:Chad. Nobody ever said that there are no atheists or agnostics on Faerun, otherwise even the game wouldn't allow picking no deity. I only said they are universally considered mad, because vast majority of Faerun is faithful to at least one deity either for divine power, following deity's ideals, or in fear what afterlife might bring, which may or may not be known. A common person seeing a cleric invoke name of their deity, say ilmater, and seeing his friend or son being healed- How can you deny existance of a deity when you see that? No wizard can cast healing spells.

But how is seeing a Cleric heal someone more awe inspiring than seeing a wizard turn them in to undead? Or a Warlock doing any of their tricks, or a rogue healing the friend with a scroll or wand? Fortunately or unfortunately (depending on how you look at it) healing is not the sole domain of the divine. Bards can cast heals as can anyone with UMD. Even resurrection scrolls are in the loot table so that is also not the sole domain of the divine. Fear of what the afterlife might bring exists in Faerun pre-ToT the same as it does in this world. I would say that for many in Toril worship is mostly paid as lip service to avoid negative repercussions in their day to day life. That is not the same as truly worshipping a deity or deities. The cleric may invoke the name of a deity, but if a PC or NPC has no ranks in spellcraft they really don't know the difference, do they? They only know what the caster tells them and different casters might say different things. A cleric of Bane might in fact tell them that Bane is the only true god and all the others are false... What then, would the individual think when they saw a priest of Ilmater invoke powers of healing? Is it heretical to believe Ilmater exists if a Priest of Bane told you no other deities are true gods?

chad878262 wrote:The cleric may invoke the name of a deity, but if a PC or NPC has no ranks in spellcraft they really don't know the difference, do they? They only know what the caster tells them and different casters might say different things.

Any common person can see an effect of the spell. Don't tell me you can't grasp a thought about hurling a ball of fire to be dangerous and destructive, without being taught about specific spells with which you can do it, or someone invoking some mystical words and suddenly mending all wounds and curing sicknesses can make you think "OH NO, YOU MADE HIM INTO A ZOMBIE". That would be severly underestimating intelligence and perception of a common man down to a level of a plain inteligence 1 animal.

Also Faiths and Avatars:

Ravial wrote:Any common person can see an effect of the spell. Don't tell me you can't grasp a thought about hurling a ball of fire to be dangerous and destructive, without being taught about specific spells with which you can do it, or someone invoking some mystical words and suddenly mending all wounds and curing sicknesses can make you think "OH NO, YOU MADE HIM INTO A ZOMBIE". That would be severly underestimating intelligence and perception of a common man down to a level of a plain inteligence 1 animal.

Not sure how that makes it more likely that a common person wouldn't think that a cleric might be simply manipulating energies differently, rather than the actual power coming from different sources. My point is that it is one thing to know beyond a shadow of a doubt as a player that gods exist (because, derp), it is entirely something different to put yourself in the shoes of Joe Commoner. You've never seen a god, you may have seen a cleric cast a cure minor wounds once or twice, you may also have seen some traveling wizard summon her familiar or maybe even throw a fireball. Heck, Baldur's Gate residence have obviously seen a lot in the various server metaplots with undead taking over the city, PCs teleporting all over the place shinint with a dozen wards, and what have you. However, assigning them an infallible belief in deities is dehumanizing them quite like you are stating my example did. If the humans of Toril are anything like real life humans then they at least should have the ability to question that which they haven't seen with their own eyes. Magic is magic, those who don't practice it have no realistic knowledge of where it comes from. They might very well believe it is all granted by gods in one form or another, just as they might believe the gods only care about the rich and powerful since they never deign to worry over their harvest or children. They don't have the thousands of gold it would cost to the local temple to bring back the dead so when little Billy dies of the flu they just have to mourn and move on.

This is really off topic and these discussions are probably best left to a separate thread. Suffice to say I was simply commenting on the fact that there are PCs who have 'none' for their deity... It might be that some of those PC's worship spirits from Rashemi, or that they worship ancestors or whatever. Might also be they are RP'd as atheists or it might simply be that the player RPs them worshipping many deities. However, there is nothing I've seen from the source material posted here that tells me prior to ToT that all common people have true knowledge (rather than faith) that gods exist. If it is only on faith and not knowledge, than just like in this world it's likely that individuals will question or outright deny the existence of gods.

Indeed, we have derailed this topic enough. Sorry, folks!

Ravial wrote:Chad. Nobody ever said that there are no atheists or agnostics on Faerun, otherwise even the game wouldn't allow picking no deity. I only said they are universally considered mad, because vast majority of Faerun is faithful to at least one deity either for divine power, following deity's ideals, or in fear what afterlife might bring, which may or may not be known. A common person seeing a cleric invoke name of their deity, say ilmater, and seeing his friend or son being healed- How can you deny existance of a deity when you see that? No wizard can cast healing spells. Clerics are one of the ways that deities are manifesting their power and existance. Heck, they can even rarely possess clerics for a certain time, if the matter is of utmost importance for their ideals.

As for atheists, I suggest reading about monks of the Old Order, as I think they do not follow any deity at all.

Wizards CAN heal.

They just cannot create life out of nothing. Only Divine Powers can.

A cleric healing someone asks their deity to do so, said deity transfers the created life to the cleric who immediately transfers it to the target, healing them.

A wizard can drain their own life, or life of another victim, to heal their target.

If I remember correctly there was an optional rule (or maybe it was just homebrewed) in a 1st edition game I once played where if your PC was in trouble and you prayed to your God for help there was a 1% plus Chr bonus (I think) chance of devine intervention.
I remember fluking out and just as the kraken was about to destroy our ship and drown/eat us, a dragon turtle showed up (after my plea) and attacked the kraken.

I had no idea who my god was at the time as my character had been assigned to me...as I was a DnD newb.
But it was EPIC having that feeling that a god was looking out for me. (even though it was just a lucky percentile roll)

Valefort wrote:That's called "Death attack not stopped by protection against evil if you're CN" .

Does protection from evil really stop the paralysis from a death attack if the attacker is evil? I sure hope not, that sounds... broken.

Also, question about the stats. I see doomguide, is that the same as morninglord?

Yes and yes, it just takes the labels directly from 2da files.

Only one pious templar on the server . Who is this brave warrior of light?

KOPOJIbPAKOB wrote:Only one pious templar on the server . Who is this brave warrior of light?

I think it's Selengil, Breadlord of the Zhentarim.

I can't help but think those Blackguard numbers are bloated just cause SO many damn players just took three levels for CHA to saves and they were Sorcs or Favored Souls. :/

Larzs wrote:I can't help but think those Blackguard numbers are bloated just cause SO many damn players just took three levels for CHA to saves and they were Sorcs or Favored Souls. :/

Same can be said for paladin and cleric. Not to mention other 3-4 level dips that make other classes bloated such as rogue, whirling dervish, monk and especially shadowdancer.

If you're talking about this one :



it is the distribution of the most important base class in characters, so no dippers there. For PRC there's no such check though.

I miss when this topic was derailed by Chad and Ravial. Bring back the glory days! jk

*Escapes through the window!*