Remixing Oversight

[Guest MAYoung]

A somewhat whimsical post:

 

If Oversight is installed it changes the standard Bioware clerics to have a slightly different set of requirements for alignment: Lathander's alignment requirements are unchanged, Helm accepts worshipers of any Lawful alignment or True Neutral, and Talos accepts worshipers of Chaotic Evil, Chaotic Neutral, or Neutral Evil alignment. In essence, it allows one category "Lawful Good" to choose from Lathander or Helm, and Talos and Helm swap followers - Chaotic Neutrals go with Talos, and Lawful Evil go with Helm. I understand the logic used to make the change, but I'm not sure I agree. Gods are never overly fond of sharing (or so they seem to be portrayed), so the idea that a priest can flip a god-coin as it were is somewhat out of character - if Lawful Evils are entirely the purview of Helm, then so should the Lawful Good. I don't think that chaotic or true neutrals should be allowed to be priests at all - the very nature of theology is to pick/create a mythos, tell everyone else they are full of [organic soil supplement] and make alternate points of view a sin, and defend their point of view to the death. The primary characteristic of a chaotic neutral is that they have no guidepost of values to their actions - how can that remotely relate to being a priest? Chaotic neutrals simply lack the necessary mindset to be priests, paladins, rangers, monks and druids - period. Similarly, a true neutral deliberately changes his/her course of action to "maintain the balance" - also not a characteristic of priests - priests have no interest in maintaining balance (the sound you hear is several million Buddhists screaming ... but I would contend that this concept is what makes someone a monk instead of a priest) - by definition they want followers to believe in the "correct" theology and stop believing what they used to believe. How I think it should be:

 

Neutral Good and Chaotic Good - Lathander (the god of "why can't we all just get along" - your typical Democrat)

Lawful Good, Lawful Neutral, and Lawful Evil - Helm (the god of "I'll make you all get along" - your typical Republican)

Chaotic Evil, Neutral Evil - Talos (the god of "why the hell should we get along" - backers of the military/industrial complex)

Chaotic Neutral - priesthoods wouldn't touch them with a 10 foot pole - Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie

True Neutral - priesthoods actively seek their destruction - agnostics and The Nature Conservancy

 

All of the above isn't based on any revision of AD&D, just observation of the human condition and the description of what alignments purport to be. Pick your poison (i.e., your underlying assumptions) and follow them to their logical conclusion. Of course, logic is simply an organized way of going wrong with confidence ...

[yarpen]

You're trying to transplant our faiths & religions into FR's ones. Chaotic Neutral in FR's can be religious because it's obvious that GODS do EXIST; here we don't have any avatars (oh, maybe in tv but it's hard to believe them). Chaotic neutral priest of Mask who thanks to his powers can get some cash for drinking and tavern whores? Neutral definition in BG2 isn't correct, in AD&D neutral person can be also just a common smith who has epic war between good and evil everyone knows where...

Oversight's clerics component was based on AD&D.

[BigRob]

Another point is that there are a multitude of gods, each responsible for a particular facet of the world and to some extent they are all sharing worshippers all the time, as each person partakes of several of those aspects each day. In general, FR religion most closely resembles Shinto or Hunduism, a single religion with many gods worshipped in their time and place, or the old polytheistic religions of the past where people/locations may have had one god they favoured, but offerings to the others were not forbidden.

[yarpen]

Still hey, people who believe in Hinduism couldn't ever see or know about material presence of their god. In FR seeing god's avatar isn't a big deal. There were Times of Troubles, gods were completely mortal. I think that FR is much more close to Greeks pantheon where gods had some human traits. They weren't an absolute like in Hinduism or Christianism, but just an avatar of some aspects of life. Fire, Death, Sun... everything turns around these symbols.

[Lollorian]

I think that FR is much more close to Greeks pantheon where gods had some human traits. They weren't an absolute like in Hinduism or Christianism, but just an avatar of some aspects of life. Fire, Death, Sun... everything turns around these symbols.

On the contrary, hinduism is pretty much comprised of many different gods holding portfolios of the various aspects of life. Like a functional democracy (well, an ideal one atleast ) There are many folk stories in India which say that avatars of these gods once walked the earth and did great things in some places. The gods were very human in nature falling victim to various mortal sins in these avatars, greed, power, even lust

 

Basically, the jist of hindu epics can be summarized (according to one's perception ofcourse ) as the eternal war between the pantheon of the ascended ones (devas - who are not generally the absolute good) and the fallen ones (asuras - who can show kindness, mercy and benevolence while flying into uncontrollable rage the next moment ) The only difference between mortals and immortals are the significantly higher power and capability of the immortals.

 

Both groups need the faith of mortals to estabilish their group as supreme and try to sway mortals to their cause (although there are no instances where a god vanished when he didn't receive his quota of faith ... said god just loses some power)

 

Cheers,

Lol

[Arashi Kai]

Let us also not forget that we are talking about the people of FR, not the people of RL.

 

FR most likely was developed with a different mindset of religion in mind than what the people of RL have. The many gods/goddesses were created for those particular people in mind, thus, they would not have to change worship of gods for sake of "balance".

 

+, just because you are a priest of a particular god does not mean that you completely disregard all other gods. You still acknowledge them, and even some gods have bitter rivalries (Corellon Larethien and Gruumsh for example).

 

Slight Tangent: This is mostly why, roleplaying-wise, I don't like playing priests, but love playing monks. Don't get me wrong, with 3 spells, I can turn a vanilla Viconia into a killing machine, but roleplaying the faith is just something that I don't like to do. I just don't like forcing my beliefs on other people: "Religion divides people, spirituality unites them".

[yarpen]

On the contrary, hinduism is pretty much comprised of many different gods holding portfolios of the various aspects of life. Like a functional democracy (well, an ideal one atleast tongue.gif) There are many folk stories in India which say that avatars of these gods once walked the earth and did great things in some places. The gods were very human in nature falling victim to various mortal sins in these avatars, greed, power, even lust

Ouch, so thanks for this sort of information. I've read only a bit about hinduism so that's why I'm such an ignorant in this matter.