Core Principle: Your Alignment System is Dumb

[A Man In Black]

They all have 9th level clerics. They do know because they can check. If it says that the leaders of the Blood of Vol believe that you can get incarnated in a world suitable to your philosophical bearing with power befitting your worthiness, then that does happen. Because for them to believe that means that they, as a 9th level or higher Cleric, fucking went where and checked. With plane shift. Also Commune.

No. The Blood of Vol afterlife is personal, that's the whole point. You get your own personal afterlife filled with an eternity of happiness by discovering the divine spark within yourself. This isn't even close to being "turned into an outsider appropriate to your nature on a planet appropriate to your nature"; subservience is abhorrent to the Blood of Vol. (It's called out specifically as what gets you damned to Dolurrh.)

It is actually impossible for the core teachings of the high level clerics to be wrong. They can be false (spread to confuse and beguile the low level and the foolish), but they can't be wrong. Because they have spells that straight up tell them whether their cosmological ideas are right or not.

No religion believes in anything like the traditional MOTP reborn-on-an-otherplanar-world-suited-to-your-ethos afterlife. Either they believe that your soul goes to Dolurrh no matter what, or that you have an afterlife that involves escaping the known space entirely.

Besides Dolurrh or various forms of undeath, there is no afterlife that anyone can cast a spell to verify in Eberron. It's perfectly possible for religions to be wrong in Eberron because the deities and afterlives are both ineffable and inaccessible to magic. Eberron's afterlife was designed, from the ground up, to beineffable despite the fact that Plane Shift and such are floating around in the setting.

What spells are going to straight up tell you the answers to these questions? Talk-to-the-deity spells don't actually talk to the deity in Eberron, so you can't cast those to get real answers.

It's a setting where people believe in gods and the afterlife mostly for the same reasons that people in the real world do. They don't believe it because someone went and checked, because it's impossible to check.

It's an odd thing to do in the context of there being actual provable gods and afterlives.

In the specific case of Eberron, it mostly doesn't have provable gods and afterlives. The only provable facts about the afterlife are that there's a plane where dead souls go, but not all of them make it there for some reason. Most of the gods are distant and cannot be contacted; the few that can (the Silver Flame, the Aerenal ancestors) have mouthpieces with essentially mortal understanding.

[Username17]

The setting has scry! It's a 4th level spell that every Cleric can cast. People can at any time look at their grandparents or the mightiest champions of their world in the afterlife. If someone is 7th level or higher and they tell you that there is an afterlife available other than lying in the dust of Dolurrh waiting until you don't care enough to mind... then there is another available afterlife. And it's probably pretty close to how they describe, because they can fucking watch it on television three times a day.

In a world with provable gods an souls, wishy washy rants about wheels within unknowables and shit simply don't fly. The afterlife is a thing. You can go poke it and measure it and report findings.

Consuming all life until even even the afterlife itself burns within the flaming heart of an unflinching god does not sound very nice. In fact, it sounds exactly like this. And if such a thing existed in a provable and demonstrable fashion - people would shit themselves. We'd be fighting back Evangelion style, because that shit is fucked up.

-Username17

[Danchild]

The Borg are totally Lawful Good. In fact, they are so Lawful Good that they want to share it with everyone. Politically speaking, they are a transhumanist socialist society. They exist without lust, avarice, envy or sloth. They consider no species their enemies, only potential allies, thus they are incapable of wrath. There is no discrimination in their society, nor do they hold any prejudices. In fact, they seek out biological and technological distinctiveness. They even have a prime directive of sorts, leaving unremarkable or undeveloped species alone until they are ready for first contact. Their entire existence is one of cooperation, efficiency and rationality. Their purpose as a unified whole is to attain perfection and then share it with the universe.

[Roy]

The Borg are totally Lawful Good. In fact, they are so Lawful Good that they want to share it with everyone. Politically speaking, they are a transhumanist socialist society. They exist without lust, avarice, envy or sloth. They consider no species their enemies, only potential allies, thus they are incapable of wrath. There is no discrimination in their society, nor do they hold any prejudices. In fact, they seek out biological and technological distinctiveness. They even have a prime directive of sorts, leaving unremarkable or undeveloped species alone until they are ready for first contact. Their entire existence is one of cooperation, efficiency and rationality. Their purpose as a unified whole is to attain perfection and then share it with the universe.

[Ganbare Gincun]

IIRC, it may have been hinted at one explanation in a non-cannon novel, though, and Baker has tossed some ideas about.

So what have they hinted at, I wonder?

[Ganbare Gincun]

They all have 9th level clerics. They do know because they can check.

Wait a minute. Two of the "gods" in Eberron are leveled characters. Vol is an 18th Level Half-Dragon Lich Wizard, and the Lord Of Blades is a 12th Level Fighter/Artificer. How do you even maintain your faith in these people as deities whenever you're within arm's reach of getting three of your buddies together to kick the crap out of your "gods"?

What spells are going to straight up tell you the answers to these questions? Talk-to-the-deity spells don't actually talk to the deity in Eberron, so you can't cast those to get real answers.

Which brings us to one of the more popular questions about Eberron: if Paladins and Clerics of the Church Of The Silver Flame can cast Detect Evil, how can there be that many evil, corrupted clergy of the Silver Flame running around destroying the church from within? It seems like the designer of Eberron wanted to have a game world where morality, the gods, and the afterlife were mysteries to the player, but forgot to remove or modify the spells that allow you to answer those questions.

We'd be fighting back Evangelion style, because that shit is fucked up.

Interestingly enough, the first thing that I thought of whenever I read about the Day Of Mourning was "Second Impact". Do the Warforged have EVA Cores implanted inside of them?

[A Man In Black]

The setting has scry! It's a 4th level spell that every Cleric can cast. People can at any time look at their grandparents or the mightiest champions of their world in the afterlife. If someone is 7th level or higher and they tell you that there is an afterlife available other than lying in the dust of Dolurrh waiting until you don't care enough to mind... then there is another available afterlife. And it's probably pretty close to how they describe, because they can fucking watch it on television three times a day.

And it just fails. Is it impossible to conceive that there might be a world where people believe in an afterlife that they can't actually see? Bear in mind, most people in the world just believe that souls go to Dolurrh and that the ones that don't make it there are stolen and annihilated. The idea that souls can go anywhere else after death is fairly uncommon.

That 7th-level cleric is telling followers to believe, based on faith, that there is some other afterlife waiting for people who live in the proper way.

In a world with provable gods an souls, wishy washy rants about wheels within unknowables and shit simply don't fly. The afterlife is a thing. You can go poke it and measure it and report findings.

Eberron is a setting where you can't. There is a verifiable afterlife, and some souls don't make it there, and nobody is exactly certain why or where they go. Nobody you can actually talk to is doing it or knows why it happens, and the souls are gone. The claims of afterlives other than Dolurrh are unverifiable.

Plus, Eberron is not a setting with provable gods. Vol isn't a god, the undying Aerenal elves have merely mortal perceptions and knowledge, and whether the Sacred Flame is a deity, powerful being, or unusual phenomenon is widely debated. In a setting where provably delusional people get divine spells granted apparently by their delusions, it's possible for a reasonable person to doubt that the gods of Eberron even exist. (Faithful people reconcile this oddity with the fact that there's a god of crazy people and a god of dicking with crazy people.)

Consuming all life until even even the afterlife itself burns within the flaming heart of an unflinching god does not sound very nice. In fact, it sounds exactly like this. And if such a thing existed in a provable and demonstrable fashion - people would shit themselves. We'd be fighting back Evangelion style, because that shit is fucked up.

The single verifiable fact of Eberron's afterlife is that you can go to a really boring Hell when you die, but some people don't. Thus, all of the religions that posit some other afterlife are all suggesting an escape of this horrible fate. Another common theme to most religions is the idea that living beings have a divine spark.

In the case of the Silver Flame, escaping Dolurrh means contributing your spark to the greater divinely pure Silver Flame, as opposed to going to Dolurrh and being extinguished. Contrasted with the prevailing religion's "Well, no matter what you're going to sit in Gehenna until your soul unravels, so make the best of it while you're alive" annihilation-in-the-godhead doesn't sound like such a bad deal.

This is not "consuming all life until even even the afterlife itself burns within the flaming heart of an unflinching god". The Silver Flame 'endgame' is turning Eberron into a paradise without evil or impurity, with the Silver Flame recognized by all as the one true god, the crappy Dolurrh afterlife eliminated as unnecessary since there won't be any impure people dying any more.

But please. Get your "Grah, I wouldn't believe in it therefore it can't make sense to hypothetical people in a fictional setting!" nerdrage on. It is hilarious.

Wait a minute. Two of the "gods" in Eberron are leveled characters. Vol is an 18th Level Half-Dragon Lich Wizard, and the Lord Of Blades is a 12th Level Fighter/Artificer. How do you even maintain your faith in these people as deities whenever you're within arm's reach of getting three of your buddies together to kick the crap out of your "gods"?

Vol is the head of a self-actualization cult. Beating up Vol doesn't invalidate their beliefs. They reject the idea of gods entirely, and believe that divinity is found by (deliberately vague) exploration of their own blood. Beating up Vol wouldn't even really affect most of the believers, since it's not common knowledge that Erandis Vol is still around.

It's not entirely clear what the followers of the Lord of Blades believe, either in an in-universe sense or a what-the-fuck-do-the-writers-mean-by-that way. Pretty much everything about the LOB is deliberately vague or conflicting, and every character who "follows the Lord of Blades" has either literally followed him around or talks to themselves and thinks the Lord of Blades answers.

Which brings us to one of the more popular questions about Eberron: if Paladins and Clerics of the Church Of The Silver Flame can cast Detect Evil, how can there be that many evil, corrupted clergy of the Silver Flame running around destroying the church from within? It seems like the designer of Eberron wanted to have a game world where morality, the gods, and the afterlife were mysteries to the player, but forgot to remove or modify the spells that allow you to answer those questions.

The best explanation I've heard is that class aura of LG/NG trumps the (much smaller) aura of being a jerk. I don't know if any Eberron book actually suggests any solution.

[Username17]

And it just fails. Is it impossible to conceive that there might be a world where people believe in an afterlife that they can't actually see? Bear in mind, most people in the world just believe that souls go to Dolurrh and that the ones that don't make it there are stolen and annihilated. The idea that souls can go anywhere else after death is fairly uncommon.

That 7th-level cleric is telling followers to believe, based on faith, that there is some other afterlife waiting for people who live in the proper way.

But, it doesn't fail. In Eberron you can totally scry on things in the other planes. Including Dolurrh. If somethng screwy is going on, you can just look.

I'm not saying that people can't believe things on faith alone. I'm saying that finding out for certain is a 4th level spell that all the major people in the debate actually have.

As per the Monster Manual, an Outsider is a soul. If they are souls created new and whole on the planes, people can check that. If they are specifically the souls of people who died on Eberron, people can check that too. This is an extremely answerable question with very basic magic that every major religious figure can have access to every day.

Wait a minute. Two of the "gods" in Eberron are leveled characters. Vol is an 18th Level Half-Dragon Lich Wizard, and the Lord Of Blades is a 12th Level Fighter/Artificer. How do you even maintain your faith in these people as deities whenever you're within arm's reach of getting three of your buddies together to kick the crap out of your "gods"?

This really doesn't bother me. People in our world have no problem believing in the divinity of people whose only abnormal trait is that they molest children, so getting people to worship something or someone that is objectively less powerful than they are doesn't seem like a stretch. In Eberron you can be a Cleric and channel divine spells by believing in a concept. You could just grab some domains, start praying to them, and cast spells through personal awesomeness. Honestly, the basic fact of that makes it surprising that there aren't more start-up messiahs around.

The basic Apprenticeship thing is still pretty much how most spellcasters come into being, why wouldn't a substantial number of the mentors ask their disciples to pray to them. You'd have various Clerics with a dozen lesser clerics praying to them as the revealer of truth all over the place. You know, just like our world does. Only more so, because doing that allows people to actually heal injuries with magic and prayer.

-Username17

[A Man In Black]

But, it doesn't fail. In Eberron you can totally scry on things in the other planes. Including Dolurrh. If somethng screwy is going on, you can just look.

I'm not saying that people can't believe things on faith alone. I'm saying that finding out for certain is a 4th level spell that all the major people in the debate actually have.

As per the Monster Manual, an Outsider is a soul. If they are souls created new and whole on the planes, people can check that. If they are specifically the souls of people who died on Eberron, people can check that too. This is an extremely answerable question with very basic magic that every major religious figure can have access to every day.

And as per ECS, outsiders aren't souls but instead just badass creatures who live on other planes. If they are the reincarnation of a mortal, then they don't know it any better than if Joe is reborn on Eberron. There's a decent argument against the idea that they are the reincarnation of mortals, because (per PGTE and the book which goes into the magic of Rierdra, forget which one that is) outsiders who die are reincarnated on their home plane with some knowledge of their previous life.

If you cast Scry on Joe's soul, and Joe's soul didn't turn up in Dolurrh, the spell fails. If you cast Commune and ask where Joe's soul went, the agent you get says "Not Dolurrh" or "No clue." If you try to Plane Shift to the plane with Joe's soul, it fails. (Some of this is in ECS, some is in PGTE.) There are lots of theories why this happens; some of them are the core tenets of certain religions.

[Danchild]

Outsiders are souls. Specifically they are made from the essence of a plane. When they are destroyed, that essence is reabsorbed and then spit out again. Cooincidentally, planes sometimes absorb the essence of other souls that find their way into them. My interpretation of Planescape & MoP references. I doubt Eberron is that different. The whole point of the setting is to cram as much D&D material into the campaign world as possible, after all.

As for 'people as deities', The 2e Domains of Dread setting has a cool concept. Divinity of Man. From a domain based on early industrial London/Jack the Ripper. The religion/philosophy was based on Deism, the belief that if God existed, he had long ago fucked off and left man to his own devices. For the setting, it had amazing consistency. It even inspired one of my players to make a cleric of Dwarf.

[Endovior]

If you cast Scry on Joe's soul, and Joe's soul didn't turn up in Dolurrh, the spell fails. If you cast Commune and ask where Joe's soul went, the agent you get says "Not Dolurrh" or "No clue." If you try to Plane Shift to the plane with Joe's soul, it fails. (Some of this is in ECS, some is in PGTE.) There are lots of theories why this happens; some of them are the core tenets of certain religions.

This is specifically a good point as to why the setting is the way it is. The standard spells available do what they normally do, but campaign-specific magical weirdness specifically causes certain divinations that would otherwise quickly clarify the issue to fail. You could, of course, physically visit the relevant planes to attempt to check up on your pet religious theory, but the nature of the reincarnation processes involved makes confirming these things quite a lot harder then they would if you could just get straight answers.

Of course, it's entirely possible that certain especially high-level divinations might be giving better information... but even if they are, there are only a handful of people who actually have access to such magics, so whatever the actual truth is, getting anyone else to believe it based off magical divination still becomes a matter of faith.

[Username17]

I am totally unfamiliar with any special rule for Eberron that would make Scry or Divination fail to function normally. The Eberron campaign setting says that all spells in the Player's Handbook function as written (ECS, page 103). Scry and Divination are both in the PHB. Neither one requires any specific god to hold your hand to give you the damn answers. It just... gives you the damn answers.

MiB is making up rules that would keep mysteries in place where as far as I can tell - no such rules exist.

-Username17

[Prak]

Which brings us to one of the more popular questions about Eberron: if Paladins and Clerics of the Church Of The Silver Flame can cast Detect Evil, how can there be that many evil, corrupted clergy of the Silver Flame running around destroying the church from within? It seems like the designer of Eberron wanted to have a game world where morality, the gods, and the afterlife were mysteries to the player, but forgot to remove or modify the spells that allow you to answer those questions.

Undetectable Alignment is a cheap, low level spell. You can go hire an out of work bard to cast it for you each day.

[A Man In Black]

I am totally unfamiliar with any special rule for Eberron that would make Scry or Divination fail to function normally. The Eberron campaign setting says that all spells in the Player's Handbook function as written (ECS, page 103). Scry and Divination are both in the PHB. Neither one requires any specific god to hold your hand to give you the damn answers. It just... gives you the damn answers.

MiB is making up rules that would keep mysteries in place where as far as I can tell - no such rules exist.

Divination is unhelpful because it doesn't answer questions, it offers advice. "Where did Bob's soul go?" A perfectly reasonable answer that doesn't break the setting is "You will gain nothing by worrying about it."

What happens in any setting when you attempt to scry something that has been incinerated, with the ashes cast to the four winds? It fails. Likewise trying to scry on a missing soul.

Remember, almost all of the religions offer annihilation as the explanation of where souls go if they don't make it do Dolurrh. The prevailing belief is that the Keeper steals them away and consumes them. Silver Flameites think they merge with the Silver Flame (and trying to Divine or Scry the gods fails, per ECS). Most of the druidic sects believe that you merge with Eberron as a whole (not Bob is reincarnated as Joe).

The only religions that offer a specific paradise are fringe cults. Nearly everyone "knows" you just go to Dolurrh when you die.

Cooincidentally, planes sometimes absorb the essence of other souls that find their way into them. My interpretation of Planescape & MoP references. I doubt Eberron is that different. The whole point of the setting is to cram as much D&D material into the campaign world as possible, after all.

Souls don't go to the other planes when they die, this much is called out specifically in ECS. The other planes aren't afterlives.

[Ganbare Gincun]

This really doesn't bother me. People in our world have no problem believing in the divinity of people whose only abnormal trait is that they molest children, so getting people to worship something or someone that is objectively less powerful than they are doesn't seem like a stretch. In Eberron you can be a Cleric and channel divine spells by believing in a concept. You could just grab some domains, start praying to them, and cast spells through personal awesomeness. Honestly, the basic fact of that makes it surprising that there aren't more start-up messiahs around.

This is true, and it would remain true for most NPCs. But for a group of PCs that realizes that they are only slightly less powerful then the "gods" - what's to keep them from knocking over Vol or the LOB and taking over their cult? Or, as you pointed out, becoming new gods? Vol's got it made at 18th level, but it seems like any character of 9th level or higher could set up their own religion and become a "god" pretty easily.

[Ganbare Gincun]

Undetectable Alignment is a cheap, low level spell. You can go hire an out of work bard to cast it for you each day.

Yes, but then you end up with Clerics that should be radiating at least a Faint Good Aura radiating no alignment aura at all, which is also pretty suspicious. And we still don't have a good explanation as to why a Good God would let Evil Clerics run around and draw power from them or why Evil Clerics that derive their spells from the Shadow Within The Flame don't ping as "clerics of an evil deity".

[A Man In Black]

This is true, and it would remain true for most NPCs. But for a group of PCs that realizes that they are only slightly less powerful then the "gods" - what's to keep them from knocking over Vol or the LOB and taking over their cult? Or, as you pointed out, becoming new gods? Vol's got it made at 18th level, but it seems like any character of 9th level or higher could set up their own religion and become a "god" pretty easily.

There's nothing stopping them. It's apparently fairly common. There are a bunch of different "religions" in Eberron which are nothing more than loosely-affiliated or vaguely-similar splinter cults: Dragon Below cults, pretty much all of the Blood of Vol followers except maybe the Emerald Claw, Lord of Blades followers, Becoming God followers, and pretty much all Dark Six followers.

[Lago PARANOIA]

I can't read this thread without thinking of this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zOfjkl-3SNE

Funniest shit ever.

[Lago PARANOIA]

A serious question abounds, though.

If the gods of good are so weak/blind/busy/stupid/jackassed that the best that they can do when fighting with the forces of evil is to maintain Dark Age Europe But More Dangerous And Racist And Ignant...

Then what chance do puny mortals have? I mean, shit, there is an entire dimension filled with angels who could individual obliterate entire squadrons of the Material Plane's finest soldiers. And the best they can do is maintain the status quo. How are you supposed to do anything in the face of such crushing, eternal impotence?

IN THE GRIM DARKNESS OF HEROIC FANTASY, THERE IS ONLY GELATINOUS SLIME.

[Maxus]

Look at it from the opposite direction, Lago.

The wicked proverbially never rest, never stop trying to corrupt and control the world, but the most they can do is hang on to what they have.

In a setting where gods and angels and demons are so evenly balanced that they fight as hard as they can with each other just to maintain their deadlock, that gives you a reason to care about your side: You're a fresh player, extra resources. One party, or even one person, really can make a difference in that situation.

Look at World War I. It was basically a deadlock until the USA came in fresh and helped tip the scales.

Mortals being new players/resources for whichever side of Good/Evil they chose would give Team Good and Team Evil a reason to care about them and try to recruit them or point them in the right direction.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Look at World War I. It was basically a deadlock until the USA came in fresh and helped tip the scales.

But in D&D, mortals trying to join the fray is more like the the people of Guyana deciding to jump in.

What the fuck are mortals supposed to do? Celestials are much more badass than mortals and there are an assload more of them. Occasionally you might get a badass from the ranks of mortals, but on the whole the best way mortalkind can help is by setting up breeding camps, killing the children who don't show any promise at age 5 so that what little food can maybe nourish the next Potential Lancelot, and hoping you might get a sorcerer out of the deal.

The idea of non-badass mortals actually having a chance to make life better for themselves is foolish in D&D.

[Maxus]

Well, hypothetically, normal vanilla mortals could make a difference by being good (or bad people). It depends on if deities in that particular setting draw power from prayer/faith or not.

But I was talking about the badass ones. Sure, there's not many of them (as a percent of the population), but you put five of them together and then they have this disturbing tendency to go around causing much loss of life, property destruction, and destabilization of the economy.

In other words, a D&D party.

[mean_liar]

You're not complaining about the Alignment System, you're complaining about the gods and plane shifting outsiders and their relationship to the Prime Material.

And, as-presented, it IS dumb: angels can all plane shift and demons and devils cannot. To resolve it you need some information, like why the angels (and those few archons that can plane shift as well) are generally confined to their home planes OR why they're not allowed to interfere in the Prime Material except in explicit cases (probably involving evil outsiders).

I don't know an "official DnD" answer to the above questions, but a setting could patch them in.

One possible solution is that all outsiders used to be able to plane shift, but it blew up the Prime and the angels eventually won the war; the terms of settlement (cosmically enforced by the nature of the universe itself via godly power or some other such unstoppable method) were that the evil outsiders had their plane shifting abilities stripped and the angels promised not to come to the Prime unless they needed to root out evil outsiders that had end-run around the terms.

...or something similar.

[Kaelik]

One possible solution is that all outsiders used to be able to plane shift, but it blew up the Prime and the angels eventually won the war; the terms of settlement (cosmically enforced by the nature of the universe itself via godly power or some other such unstoppable method) were that the evil outsiders had their plane shifting abilities stripped and the angels promised not to come to the Prime unless they needed to root out evil outsiders that had end-run around the terms.

Make it the pact Primevil or whatever. And Asmodeous wants it to stay because that's how he keeps an iron grip on all the devils, and locks the demons out, by controlling all the portals.

[Lago PARANOIA]

One of the things that really bugs me about the Great Wheel is how it implies that if you were an awesome mass-murdering slaver who personally skinned a virgin every day you'll wind up in an awesome underground palace and immortal and powerful and whatnot. But if you were one of the powerless peasantly victims you'll probably end up a raggedy and diseased warthog and get hunted by more badass neutral guys for all eternity. And because good is really hard to do when you're an illiterate, underfed, unarmed peon the best you or your (great great great great) grandchildren can hope for is to go out on a mass murdering spree and hope Erythnul decides to throw you a bone. And this has been the state of the world for thousands of years and will probably always be like that.

That's incredibly fucking grimdark. I don't even think CoC goes that far. I guess I shouldn't say 'bugs' so much as 'I am so flabbergasted that I actually feel a little awe'.