Bhaalspawn Clerics

TethorilofLathander

I read somewhere that the gods aren't allowed to intervene with the Bhaalspawn. How is it possible that a Bhaalspawn can be a cleric then? Surely by giving the Bhaalspawn the power to defeat his/her enemies, it's intervening and helping the Bhaalspawn out?

I would just like to know as my character has always been a cleric, yet I've never pondered the lore behind this particular aspect of his character.

Mortianna

In 2e, Priests/Clerics may worship and venerate either a God (of which we're the most familiar), a Force, or a Philosophy. I could see a Bhaalspawn serving one of the latter two:

From the 2e Complete Priest's Handbook, by Aaron Allston (1990, 15-16):

"A Force is some sort of natural (or unnatural) process which influences the world. It isn't necessarily intelligent, but it is magically powerful . . . and humans who accept the dictates and goals of this force can become its priests and use spells based on that magical power. Some Forces which can be so worshipped include Entropy, Nature, the Life-Death-Rebirth Cycle, and Magic. Druids tend to be priests of the Force of Nature, instead of specific Gods of Nature. (There are exceptions to that generalization, of course.)

A Philosophy is an idea, or set of ideas, which (in these magical worlds) is so compelling that it attracts magical energy and faith to it, much as a Force does. Philosophies are usually created by man or other sentient races, spread throughout cultures, and gain such widespread acceptance and belief that they do become much like Forces. When no one believes in a Philosophy any longer, it can generate no magical power and support no priests, so the priests' duty is to embody its attributes and to teach the philosophy so that it will never die. Sample philosophies include Oneness With Nature, Peace, the Divinity of Mankind, the Sanctity of Life, Nihilism, and so on.

In the AD&D® game, the God, Force, and Philosophy are identical in the way they are treated by the game mechanics. All three provide spells and powers to their priests. All three demand personal requirements and services of their priests and of their non-priest followers. And all three, to a lesser or greater degree, shape the world, both through their own powers and through their agents, the priests."

As long as your character serves some sort of abstract Force or Philosophy that exists in the world (e.g., War, Magic, Evil, or Good) and not a God, I don't think it would cause any issues in the pantheon.

Duron

And I don't see why there would be a problem for a Bhallspawn to be a faithful of another God. Simply put that God isn't intervening, he is granting power to his faithful as he would to any other of his worshipers with such training.
Just as Lolth is doing the same to her Drow priestess Sendai. Lolth isn't intervining, she is giving favor to the one proven worthy of it.

You mistake cleric granted powers as interventions from the Gods, that is only partly true, as by DnD lore those same Clerics had to earn their granted powers by acting in accordance of the faith dictated by that God. Only by doing the God's biding do they grant powers, they don't care if it is a regular mortal or a powerful demi-God who is asking for them, only if they had proper training and act according to the God's wishes they get the powers granted by that God.

In the grand scheme of things, they are circumventing the no interference rule to strenghten the position of their favored champion Bhaalspawn.

SCARY_WIZARD

Mortianna said:

In 2e, Priests/Clerics may worship and venerate either a God (of which we're the most familiar), a Force, or a Philosophy. I could see a Bhaalspawn serving one of the latter two:

From the 2e Complete Priest's Handbook, by Aaron Allston (1990, 15-16):

"A Force is some sort of natural (or unnatural) process which influences the world. It isn't necessarily intelligent, but it is magically powerful . . . and humans who accept the dictates and goals of this force can become its priests and use spells based on that magical power. Some Forces which can be so worshipped include Entropy, Nature, the Life-Death-Rebirth Cycle, and Magic. Druids tend to be priests of the Force of Nature, instead of specific Gods of Nature. (There are exceptions to that generalization, of course.)

A Philosophy is an idea, or set of ideas, which (in these magical worlds) is so compelling that it attracts magical energy and faith to it, much as a Force does. Philosophies are usually created by man or other sentient races, spread throughout cultures, and gain such widespread acceptance and belief that they do become much like Forces. When no one believes in a Philosophy any longer, it can generate no magical power and support no priests, so the priests' duty is to embody its attributes and to teach the philosophy so that it will never die. Sample philosophies include Oneness With Nature, Peace, the Divinity of Mankind, the Sanctity of Life, Nihilism, and so on.

In the AD&D® game, the God, Force, and Philosophy are identical in the way they are treated by the game mechanics. All three provide spells and powers to their priests. All three demand personal requirements and services of their priests and of their non-priest followers. And all three, to a lesser or greater degree, shape the world, both through their own powers and through their agents, the priests."

As long as your character serves some sort of abstract Force or Philosophy that exists in the world (e.g., War, Magic, Evil, or Good) and not a God, I don't think it would cause any issues in the pantheon.

A lot like how WarCraft RPG handled priests of the Holy Light! It was pretty much conviction fueling your divine spellcasting, and also conviction keeping the Scarlet Crusade capable of casting divine magic.

A very interesting take on things! A Clerical Child of Bhaal, who thinks that their worship of, say, Selûne, grants them divine spellcasting abilities; instead, it's some sort of conviction that fuels it, and Selûne just sort of smiles and nods. Then, after discovering things and looking them over, the Cleric goes their own way with things.
That could also be a good reason, story-wise, for a human Bhaalspawn to abandon the Cleric class.

Schneidend

I wouldn't consider granting spells "interfering," as a Cleric of any given god is more or less free to do what they will with their spells, barring actually breaking the tenets of their faith. It's not as if Helm sends you a memo saying "I'll give you spells if you don't listen to your dad. Yeah, that'd be great."

@Mortianna
Forgotten Realms negates the ideal/cause/virtue thing. You can only get divine power from deities or through a demon/devil that works as a middle man for a deity.

Mortianna

@Schneidend What about 1st and 2nd level spells? I seem to remember something from 1e/2e that those spells are powered solely through one's own faith and conviction. (I mainly played Greyhawk and Ravenloft campaigns back in my PnP days, so I'm not so familiar with FR game lore.)

artificial_sunlight

I reason that the good/neutral gods try to keep you peace and steer you in the right direction. Your blood dreams interfear with that but al other dreams your god grant you spells and try to keep you at bay.

Its good that you can't die because you would certanly end up False and have a bad time after dead.

magpie

Schneidend said:

@Mortianna
Forgotten Realms negates the ideal/cause/virtue thing. You can only get divine power from deities or through a demon/devil that works as a middle man for a deity.

On the other hand, I could see things working a little differently when the cleric in question has some divine essence themselves
In my book, a bhaalspawn cleric *could* get their power from conviction. Hell, they might not even explicitly be clerics at all, but just be in tune with their divine essence. Or one of my favorites: start out as a cleric of X, only to find out later that he isn't on the payroll at all, which leads to the very story appropriate question where all that power came from.

Mornmagor

I give myself my own spells, i became a God and went back in time so i affected the time continuum :P

GemHound

More like, all jokes aside:
I found out where my spells came from. I was drawing little snippets of Bhaal's essence for every spell.

artificial_sunlight

In my game Urdlen pointed his middle claw to AO and gave my cleric/thief all the power he needed + poison weapon

Schneidend

Mornmagor said:

I give myself my own spells, i became a God and went back in time so i affected the time continuum :P

Reminds me of my first 4E character, a tiefling Warlord who believed he used to be a duke of the Nine Hells cursed into a mortal body by Belial. Later, the party saved a goblin from his clan and recruited him. Being the only character that could speak goblin, and also being awesome, the goblin companion came to worship my Warlord as a devil lord. The goblin became a Paladin.

@magpie and @GemHound, I like where your heads are at! @Mornmagor, less so. I hate time travel plots that aren't Back to the Future or Doctor Who.

Mornmagor

Schneidend said:

Mornmagor said:

I give myself my own spells, i became a God and went back in time so i affected the time continuum :P

Reminds me of my first 4E character, a tiefling Warlord who believed he used to be a duke of the Nine Hells cursed into a mortal body by Belial. Later, the party saved a goblin from his clan and recruited him. Being the only character that could speak goblin, and also being awesome, the goblin companion came to worship my Warlord as a devil lord. The goblin became a Paladin.

@magpie and @GemHound, I like where your heads are at! @Mornmagor, less so. I hate time travel plots that aren't Back to the Future or Doctor Who.

Hm, i could be my own Paladin! Paladin of Myself.

But, come on, time travel is very in, these days. Even World of Warcraft will do it for the next expansion(lol )

But seriously, a cleric draws power from his faith and enlightment, a deity is a source "allowing" that power, it's not like the deity is interfering.

It's still up to the Bhaalspawn to use the power as he/she sees fit.

Mystra is responsible for (at least) Arcane magic existing anyway, does she interfere when she allows Wizards and Sorcerers to cast?

Gods are like a magic battery. You do the work, and need to understand how it works.

Schneidend

@Mornmagor
Oh boy am I ever conflicted about that next WoW expansion. I wasn't happy when they got rid of talent trees, but now they're doing an expansion about my favorite period of Warcraft lore, but I have to go back in time to experience it! I'll be mighty upset if there's no customization options to be a red/brown orc.

Mornmagor

Well they're upgrading the character models, so we're hopeful about more customization

Xavioria

This is actually the reason why I hated being a cleric... once you become a god, what happens to your power then? does the OTHER god still give it to you or do you just grant yourself power? and if that's the case, would you be friends with the god that granted the power in the first place?

AND if that's so, then in BG3 IF they put a continuation into place, does that mean it's going to be a start like DA origins where you start out in a particular area where the gods you venerated or liked as a mortal have become friends of yours?

Elendar

Xavioria said:

This is actually the reason why I hated being a cleric... once you become a god, what happens to your power then? does the OTHER god still give it to you or do you just grant yourself power? and if that's the case, would you be friends with the god that granted the power in the first place?

AND if that's so, then in BG3 IF they put a continuation into place, does that mean it's going to be a start like DA origins where you start out in a particular area where the gods you venerated or liked as a mortal have become friends of yours?

If they do a third Baldur's Gate, it definitely shouldn't have anything to do with the Bhaalspawn, except to mention the Bhaalspawn occasionally in a conversation here and there. But I doubt BG3 will ever happen. They'll most likely do enhanced versions of IWD, IWD2, and PS:Torment instead.

Xavioria

@Elendar and exactly what evidence points you in that direction? Considering that Beamdog has directly expressed keen interest in wanting to make a bg3, what you're saying doesn't make alot of sense...

Not trying to be confrontational... I would just love to know how you figure about what they'll "most likely do."

Joey

yeah i don't get why they can't make a bg3 based on the same protagonist as in 1 +2. Here's all the extra story you'd need - 'demi-god pissed someone off/messed up, lost all his powers'.

There, that was hard.

On topic, i do find it a bit strange that a god would continue to grant his cleric powers, even when the bhallspawn is consciously trying to ascend to godhood. I suppose that's because the ruleset is written for more mundane adventures, wheras baldur's gate deals with someone becomming a demi-god. Clearly the ruleset wasn't written for this, so we have to make the best of what we have.

TethorilofLathander

@Xavioria, I've thought of another BG3 idea. It should be like Heavy Rain, where you can have a few different characters (one created, two premade) and follow them seperately, even if their journeys end up in the same place eventually

GemHound

Joey said:

yeah i don't get why they can't make a bg3 based on the same protagonist as in 1 +2. Here's all the extra story you'd need - 'demi-god pissed someone off/messed up, lost all his powers'.

There, that was hard.

On topic, i do find it a bit strange that a god would continue to grant his cleric powers, even when the bhallspawn is consciously trying to ascend to godhood. I suppose that's because the ruleset is written for more mundane adventures, wheras baldur's gate deals with someone becomming a demi-god. Clearly the ruleset wasn't written for this, so we have to make the best of what we have.

This makes sense for all deities, since Good deities would love seeing the end of an evil god to have it replaced by a good god, and evil deities would like to see a follower take such a position from another, so they could eventually gain the powers themselves.

Mornmagor

Xavioria said:

@Elendar and exactly what evidence points you in that direction? Considering that Beamdog has directly expressed keen interest in wanting to make a bg3, what you're saying doesn't make alot of sense...

Not trying to be confrontational... I would just love to know how you figure about what they'll "most likely do."

He probably expressed his doubts in a more blunt way i guess.

We all want to see BG3, and i don't mind what they do with the story, but sometimes it seems too good to be true, while some other times i wonder if they'll be able to pull it off, since right now they are really a small company without 3D artists or animators, and without a game that they created on their own from scratch.

So the train of though is : They are small-> they need to get bigger -> they will get bigger through enhanced editions(?) first-> they make BG3 then-> but what if too much time passes and the revenue from enhanced editions isn't enough? Or additionally, what if they need to work on a very small budget for BG3?

You know, thoughts thoughs and more thoughts. No evidence obviously, but some times these thoughts are disturbing ;x

Are they really gonna pull off a BG3 as their first full game? If they can do it though, and good enough, they probably could redefine the map of rpgs today. They do have some experienced people on their team after all.

Oh well ;/

ReadingRambo

Maybe not granting powers WOULD be interfering. If the Bhaalspawn sought out the deity out of their own free will, not granting powers because of their heritage seems like interfering: