D&D General Baldur's Gate 3 Hates Religion (Spoilers)

[Steampunkette]

The gods shouldn’t be “helping” with the mindflayers.

Thats why they grant powers to mortals.

And those mortals are... where?

Gale is no longer Chosen, so Mystra offers him nothing.

Minthara broke her oath to Lolth and gets nothing.

Shadowheart gets no aid from her goddess in either direction to fight against the Absolute beyond what any cleric gets for any quest.

Lae'zel gets named Hshar'lak by Vlaakith and all gith want her dead (except heretics)

And none of them mobilize their armies or send their people to help fight. Ketheric Thorme had an -army- of Dark Justiciars that Yurgir and Raphael slaughtered... but Shadowheart gets diddly squat?

How about Silvanus? Halsin's there. Archdruid. Has his own grove and other groves send him backup. No way you can argue Mind Flayers don't upset the balance of nature, what with them being Aberrations and all.

Ilmater. Corellon. Tyr. Sune. Lurue. Eillistraee, Yondalla.

Heck, Mielikki sends Drizz't on endless quests in the Sword Coast and the North but can't spare him for fighting The Absolute?

Even just getting word that there's Chosen or soldiers fighting for some of the gods against the Absolutists outside Baldur's Gate's gates would really go a long way to add a feeling of there being investment from the gods into the success of your mission. Even if it has no -actual- effect on the story and is entirely an "They're over here, helping where we can't see them!" would flesh things out a bit.

Like. You meet Rion and have the option to send her and the rest of Jaheira's kids off to help the refugees. You never see it, you don't hear about it again, but it provides the explanation of that being how they're helping your cause.

But, really, that's the problem of making a campaign setting with 100+ gods and half of them good. When something big happens you have to either come up with excuses for them to not be there so your character can be a hero, or you're left with the Avengers Conundrum of "Where were the Avengers when a Celestial started busting his way out of the planet in the Eternals movie?!"

Like you'd think they'd at least drop a line or comment on there being a titanic dude's head sticking out of the surface and a hand practically reaching out of the atmosphere, right?

It's why I tend to go with fewer gods in my settings, and weaker gods, too.

 

[Scribe]

It's why I tend to go with fewer gods in my settings, and weaker gods, too.

It was something I wished Planescape would have covered more, but it seems the "Gods Problem" persists.

 

[ProfessorDetective]

And those mortals are... where?

Gale is no longer Chosen, so Mystra offers him nothing.

Minthara broke her oath to Lolth and gets nothing.

Shadowheart gets no aid from her goddess in either direction to fight against the Absolute beyond what any cleric gets for any quest.

Lae'zel gets named Hshar'lak by Vlaakith and all gith want her dead (except heretics)

And none of them mobilize their armies or send their people to help fight. Ketheric Thorme had an -army- of Dark Justiciars that Yurgir and Raphael slaughtered... but Shadowheart gets diddly squat?

How about Silvanus? Halsin's there. Archdruid. Has his own grove and other groves send him backup. No way you can argue Mind Flayers don't upset the balance of nature, what with them being Aberrations and all.

Ilmater. Corellon. Tyr. Sune. Lurue. Eillistraee, Yondalla.

Heck, Mielikki sends Drizz't on endless quests in the Sword Coast and the North but can't spare him for fighting The Absolute?

Even just getting word that there's Chosen or soldiers fighting for some of the gods against the Absolutists outside Baldur's Gate's gates would really go a long way to add a feeling of there being investment from the gods into the success of your mission. Even if it has no -actual- effect on the story and is entirely an "They're over here, helping where we can't see them!" would flesh things out a bit.

Like. You meet Rion and have the option to send her and the rest of Jaheira's kids off to help the refugees. You never see it, you don't hear about it again, but it provides the explanation of that being how they're helping your cause.

But, really, that's the problem of making a campaign setting with 100+ gods and half of them good. When something big happens you have to either come up with excuses for them to not be there so your character can be a hero, or you're left with the Avengers Conundrum of "Where were the Avengers when a Celestial started busting his way out of the planet in the Eternals movie?!"

Like you'd think they'd at least drop a line or comment on there being a titanic dude's head sticking out of the surface and a hand practically reaching out of the atmosphere, right?

It's why I tend to go with fewer gods in my settings, and weaker gods, too.

At least have a few more random Clerics and/or Paladins (with the occasional Warlock or Sorcerer) mustering at BG or the Druid Grove going "Yondalla/Helm/Eilistraee/Lathander/Whoever sent me over here saying a major threat was amassing. Anyone know about that?" or found dead with dairies reading "Yondalla/Helm/Eilistraee/Lathander/Whoever sent me over here saying a major threat was amassing. I wonder if anyone knows- The rest of the writing is smeared with blood and is illegible.". You know, something.

 

[Rystefn]

Yes, the gods are useless and stupid. It's long been an important, one might even say foundational, aspect of the setting (and one of the many reasons I hate it). But some people in this conversation are being unfair to Vlaakith. She's not a goddess, no matter how much she and her followers say she is. She's a lich pretending to be a goddess. She has absolutely no divine power whatsoever. And, unlike the actual deities involved in this plot, is actually doing something about it, in the form of sending a sizeable contingent of her people to this out of the way backwater to try to fight against this. Granted, she's working from vastly incomplete information, and is fundamentally incapable of accepting that non-gith might actually matter, but she's still leaps and bounds ahead of the curve compared to all the actual gods who should be taking this way more seriously than they are.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

And those mortals are... where?

Gale is no longer Chosen, so Mystra offers him nothing.

Minthara broke her oath to Lolth and gets nothing.

Shadowheart gets no aid from her goddess in either direction to fight against the Absolute beyond what any cleric gets for any quest.

Lae'zel gets named Hshar'lak by Vlaakith and all gith want her dead (except heretics)

And none of them mobilize their armies or send their people to help fight. Ketheric Thorme had an -army- of Dark Justiciars that Yurgir and Raphael slaughtered... but Shadowheart gets diddly squat?

How about Silvanus? Halsin's there. Archdruid. Has his own grove and other groves send him backup. No way you can argue Mind Flayers don't upset the balance of nature, what with them being Aberrations and all.

Ilmater. Corellon. Tyr. Sune. Lurue. Eillistraee, Yondalla.

Heck, Mielikki sends Drizz't on endless quests in the Sword Coast and the North but can't spare him for fighting The Absolute?

Even just getting word that there's Chosen or soldiers fighting for some of the gods against the Absolutists outside Baldur's Gate's gates would really go a long way to add a feeling of there being investment from the gods into the success of your mission. Even if it has no -actual- effect on the story and is entirely an "They're over here, helping where we can't see them!" would flesh things out a bit.

Like. You meet Rion and have the option to send her and the rest of Jaheira's kids off to help the refugees. You never see it, you don't hear about it again, but it provides the explanation of that being how they're helping your cause.

But, really, that's the problem of making a campaign setting with 100+ gods and half of them good. When something big happens you have to either come up with excuses for them to not be there so your character can be a hero, or you're left with the Avengers Conundrum of "Where were the Avengers when a Celestial started busting his way out of the planet in the Eternals movie?!"

Like you'd think they'd at least drop a line or comment on there being a titanic dude's head sticking out of the surface and a hand practically reaching out of the atmosphere, right?

It's why I tend to go with fewer gods in my settings, and weaker gods, too.

Okay.

Clerics and Paladins are the gods helping. Chosen are irrelevant to the question.

Like…the Realms are in an era where they have just gotten the cosmology back in order less than a decade ago. A big part of that was the gods not poking the world so damn much and letting mortals do thier thing. We had a whole sundering about this.


I mean imagine the infantalised hell of the gods solving all the problems of the mortal races. There are no “good” gods in such a world, just nicer and less nice pet owners.

 

[Mecheon]

I must have missed that, but as I dont have issue with the Wall (and hate to see the removal of things...) thats good I suppose.

The Wall was pretty blatently written in to be destroyed in the first place, it just never was. It shouldn't have lasted past Mask of the Betrayer, honestly. Rejoice in its destruction. Rejoice in an evil being removed from the Planes

the best d&d gods are those of Deities & Demigods; the second best Forgotten Realms, the third those of Dragonlance

Deities and Demigods mangles half the gods it brings over (and that's before we even get to the one it flat out makes up), FR's gods are. well, this subject, and Dragonlance's gods have been a pretty good use case for "Kill the gods and shatter their thrones"

Eberron's are much more useful for storyline stuff

 

[Staffan]

The FR's afterlife makes absolutely no sense unless you take a Bleach-esque spin on it (the anime, not the liquid). This is becauase dying doesn't actually mean you're dead and, in most cases, a mortal soul transforms into a more powerful soul that gets everything it ever wanted under a god of its choice. In reality, most adventurers in the multiverse should be the dead, who are fully self-actualized in the direct presence of their god and have more power and knowledge then they ever did in their moral life. Wizards most of all should become these hyper-competent Indiana Jones-style adventurers since now they have an entire afterlife to learn every spell ever and get to 20th level (and beyond, since they're like an arcane angel or some naughty word now).

Is that really something that's canon to FR these days? I would assume that FR would use the "standard" Planescape model of the afterlife, where souls more or less lose all their identity and are turned into "petitioners" keeping their patron deity's realms running.

Under your clothes you're just as naked as the rest of us! Down with the tyranny of having to wear pants!

It is known that pants are a tool of the oppressor.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

the best d&d gods are those of Deities & Demigods; the second best Forgotten Realms, the third those of Dragonlance

Indeed. Having the gods sort it out is a killer for player agency. Why bother to save the world when the gods will just sort out the problem? It's pretty much essential for D&D that gods be non-interventionist.

 

[Ogre Mage]

The main six companions are all struggling with some toxic authority figure. Sometimes this figure is a deity, other times not.

Shadowheart - Shar.
Astarion - Cazador.
Lae'zel - Vlaakith.
Karlach - Gortash/Zariel.
Gale - Mystra.
Wyll - Mizora.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

The main six companions are all struggling with some toxic authority figure. Sometimes this figure is a deity, other times not.

Shadowheart - Shar.
Astarion - Cazador.
Lae'zel - Vlaakith.
Karlach - Gortash/Zariel.
Gale - Mystra.
Wyll - Mizora.

+ Dark Urge - Bhaal.