Choosing the right deity

Grum

So...I'm doing a ranger/cleric playthrough. Because I've heard how OP it is..and stone skins are fun. But I need proper head canon, and I turn to you for help!

My idea is this: Charname has the Bhaalspawn urges of murder and death. Rather than fight it he turns to faith. Faith in that death isn't evil, it is just part of life. So he channels those murderous tendencies into something that he feels is more natural and productive.

So, which deity should he be worshipping? Extra points for a nature deity and an internet cookie if it involves the natural cycle of life and death.

elminster

Mielikki would probably be the go-to deity for rangers. But she would clash on the whole murder thing.

deltago

Malar, however he is chaotic evil but a Ranger looking for a good hunt may actaully pay tribute to him.

After that, you have Silvanus who is more aligned with the circle of life.l aspect.

Or if you are looking for something completely unique, try Grolanter. He is the deity of Hill Giants and has both Death and Earth as domains. Having a human or half elf worship him would seem strange, but make a unique backstory. (Espically if INT is your dump stat)

elminster

Shevarash might work. He's the elven demigod of revenge, loss and hatred of the Drow. Not a nature god though.

killerrabbit

I'm going for Silvanus. Death is part of life, soil is made of dead things and soil brings new life into the world. Would probably romance Jaheria "Die, creature and feed the earth!"

Remembering that the Romans thought the druids were pretty darn evil -- a twisted religion who rites included blood letting, human sacrifice and cannibalism. The modern conception of the druids as a peaceful old time religion that runs "naked threw the whuids" is just that -- a modern conception.

If Roman propaganda was right, the gods of the druids were big on death.

Vallmyr

Mayyybbeee Urogalan? Halfling god of the earth and the dead?
http://forgottenrealms.wikia.com/wiki/Urogalan

Osiris, God of the Harvest and the Dead?
http://forgottenrealms.wikia.com/wiki/Osiris

I'll see if I can find anymore nature/death themed deities.

Grum

So glad that I made this thread! A big thank you. I'm heavily leaning towards Silvanus after killerrabbit's explanation...though Vallmyr's Osiris is tempting.

Can a cleric worship more than one deity? As in praying to various nature themed deities as the situation merits?

dockaboomski

They give super-info on major deities in Faiths & Avatars, if you wanna read. It is actually unusual for any normal person to worship only one god, but I'd assume a cleric would pick one over the other, but also not totes ignore the others.

FinneousPJ

Don't forget to change the ini file option to give you full druid casting.

Grum

FinneousPJ said:

Don't forget to change the ini file option to give you full druid casting.

You mean without light modding I won't get iron skin?

That's...not good.

FinneousPJ

Yes, that is correct.

Well, not modding but changing an option.

SmilingSword

killerrabbit said:

Remembering that the Romans thought the druids were pretty darn evil -- a twisted religion who rites included blood letting, human sacrifice and cannibalism. The modern conception of the druids as a peaceful old time religion that runs "naked threw the whuids" is just that -- a modern conception.

Remember to take anything said or written about other cultures by the Romans with a barrel full of salt. A lot of what is recorded as Roman history is simply propaganda, you have to remember the for a lot of the Roman Empire's history it was expansionist and it's far easier to rally your people to yet another war if the people there are portrayed as cannibalistic savages rather that slightly different people.
Roman society was far more brutal than say Ghaalish society, but for hundreds of years historians considered the Ghaals savages based on Roman writings, it's only in the last 15 to 25 yrs these old facilities are starting to be debunked.

Also when where did these writings take place? Was during the Roman empire or the Holy Roman empire? Because Christians have a history of demonizing any religion that isn't Christianity e.i they based the current form of their Devil off Pan the Greek Satyr God of wild, shepherds, flocks and rustic music.

Sciobtha

SmilingSword said:

Also when where did these writings take place? Was during the Roman empire or the Holy Roman empire? Because Christians have a history of demonizing any religion that isn't Christianity e.i they based the current form of their Devil off Pan the Greek Satyr God of wild, shepherds, flocks and rustic music.

I guess that depends on who you ask. The Roman Catholic church didn't so much as demonize other religions as adapt theirs to aid in "recruitment" for example moving Christmas to coincide with Saturnalia, bringing in the tree, etc They would just move their holy days to match various "pagan" days to make the transition seem more natural.

As far the "current" Christian satan. There is no one form, he appears in many different guises. Maybe you are thinking of satanists? As far as I know, they have pictured their lucifer as looking similar to pan.

Slightly off topic though from OP lol

I don't know that he mentioned which alignment he was taking? That might help narrow down some choices.

killerrabbit

SmilingSword said:

Remember to take anything said or written about other cultures by the Romans with a barrel full of salt. A lot of what is recorded as Roman history is simply propaganda, you have to remember the for a lot of the Roman Empire's history it was expansionist and it's far easier to rally your people to yet another war if the people there are portrayed as cannibalistic savages rather that slightly different people.
Roman society was far more brutal than say Ghaalish society, but for hundreds of years historians considered the Ghaals savages based on Roman writings, it's only in the last 15 to 25 yrs these old facilities are starting to be debunked.

Also when where did these writings take place? Was during the Roman empire or the Holy Roman empire? Because Christians have a history of demonizing any religion that isn't Christianity e.i they based the current form of their Devil off Pan the Greek Satyr God of wild, shepherds, flocks and rustic music.

Actually in the christian and pre-christian empire and even in the republic. But, yeah, you put your finger on it -- propaganda, expansionism, demonization. Who knows if the Baal of Carthage himself was really into child sacrifice? Perhaps he was a fairly benign god and we're all contributing to his demonization by making him the god of murder. Still, it's fun to see if you can find glimmers of truth hidden between the lies and distortions -- one of the Greeks also mentioned that the northern barbarians had a bloody religion. Who knows for sure but it does like there a was a time in the ancient world when blood sacrifice was all the rage and I'm guessing there was something to the bloodletting stories.

(And heck yeah Romans were terrible and brutish -- they actually tried to live up the example of a guy named 'Brutus'!)

But @Sciobtha makes a good point. I think that 'pagans' played an important role in the holy roman empire for a long time and Rome was actually pretty willing to find ways to mesh the new religion and the old ones. For all the Roman awfulness they were also rather tolerant of religious and cultural difference. I think the real pagan purges -- genocides -- began in earnest with Charlemagne and culminated with the Teutonic knights.

Err . . . @Grum sorry for the highjack! Having to chose a deity is Forgotten Realms specific because if you don't have one no one will claim you when you die and you will be forced to make deal with a devil or find yourself part of Kelemvor's great wall of the faithless. In the other settings you can be a priest of an alignment and/or of multiple similarly-aligned gods. So, no reason you can't be like Aerie and choose a primary and a secondary god and still be AOK with Forgotten Realms rules.

SmilingSword

@killerrabbit the earliest recorded persecution of pagans in the Holy Roman Empire was the during the reign of Constantine the Great, that's about 500 yrs before Charlemagne, although the true purges, burning of temples and outlawing of any pagan worship took place during the reign of Constantius II, Constantine's son.

@Sciobtha when I spoke of the current Christian Satan, I mean the image that has been imbedded in popular consciousness for hundreds of years. The cloven hoofed, horned, goateed, normally goat headed version of Lucifer. This Satan can be seen in everything from religious texts to children's cartoons. He has occasionally been portrayed differently in the passed, sometimes some monster, sometimes a man, sometimes a beautiful fallen angel, but the idea of a beautiful fallen angel only really became popular during the 80's. Nowadays Satan is normally portrayed as a white man in business suit, but still if you were to show most people a picture of a Satyr and ask them who this is, they would say the devil.

blackchimes

Grum said:

So...I'm doing a ranger/cleric playthrough. Because I've heard how OP it is..and stone skins are fun.

Ranger/Cleric was only considered "OP" for two reasons:

- Above average minimum rolls, which is absolutely meaningless since you want them higher still, and if anything high minimums make it harder to readjust your points

- The BUG where you got access to all Druidic spells, from level 1, because the game engine used "Priest Scroll" for both Cleric and Druidic magic, which was fixed in EE.

You can enable this bug back... but that would be considered an exploit.

FinneousPJ

@blackchimes It is an option.

Sciobtha

SmilingSword said:

@Sciobtha when I spoke of the current Christian Satan, I mean the image that has been imbedded in popular consciousness for hundreds of years. The cloven hoofed, horned, goateed, normally goat headed version of Lucifer. This Satan can be seen in everything from religious texts to children's cartoons. He has occasionally been portrayed differently in the passed, sometimes some monster, sometimes a man, sometimes a beautiful fallen angel, but the idea of a beautiful fallen angel only really became popular during the 80's. Nowadays Satan is normally portrayed as a white man in business suit, but still if you were to show most people a picture of a Satyr and ask them who this is, they would say the devil.

Really? That's funny, I have never seen satan portrayed that way all through my life thus far. I googled some images of pan and it looked nothing like the images of satan I've seen to ate. Maybe it's a regional thing? I'd think people would be more likely to identify a satyr as Tumnus now, after The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. :P

killerrabbit

@grum I say the exploit is legit -- it is awfully hard to get character with the scores to be a ranger cleric and it has been around for years making it semi-cannon

@SmilingSword I think we are pretty close to agreeing but I am using 'purge' a bit differently to mean -- trying to displace or eliminate a people or religion entirely whereas you are using 'purge' to mean a concerted campaign to set up a state religion and the resultant persecution of non believers and 'apostates'. You are focusing on the time of Constantine and I focusing on the rise of Julian the Apostate. Julian came to power because most of the people living in the christian empire were something other than christian and many were getting annoyed with the increasingly intolerant church. As I read teh books, life as pagan under Constantine wasn't great but it was possible and, especially if you were some distance from Constantinople, it was possible to worship just as you had been doing for years.

Whereas Charlemagne, the Teutonic knights and the like had a 'convert or die' approach.

Grum

So, I have Charname...who is a ranger/cleric of Silvanus (thanks to Deltago & Killerabbit), who off-prays to Mielikki (thanks to Elminster) when he summons a forest spirit, Malar when hunting down a foe (thanks to Deltago), and Osiris (thanks to Vallmyr) when he, quite often, raises the dead to fight alongside him.

Now for something *very* strange.

I was looking at his lvl 4 spells. And he has "call woodland beings", a druid spell.

I made, as a test, a ranger/cleric in black pits II, and that ranger/cleric didn't get the level 4 or level 5 druid spells.

So that got my head scratching. Why is it that the BG1EE import gets the druid spells and the BGIIEE created one doesn't?

deltago

it was fixed in BG2. Not fixed yet in BG1.

DragonKing

I hear Tiamat has great health care.

Grum

But his dental copay is horrible...

DragonKing

Grum said:

But his dental copay is horrible...

His? We are talking about the same goddess here right?

Brer_Rabbit

DragonKing said:

Grum said:

But his dental copay is horrible...

His? We are talking about the same goddess here right?

I always imagined gods were above the whole gender thing myself... So... it?

DragonKing

Brer_Rabbit said:

always imagined gods were above the whole gender thing myself... So... it?
Eh, as long as its a Dragon, works for me. But I wouldn't te that to Lolth or the lady.