AMIA ARCHIVE • View topic

If I recall correctly, our lore for Amia is that things like druids cannot worship an "element" or "nature" and receive their spells. I'm curious what our reasoning is.

I understand FR is a weird place in D&D when it comes to worship and such, given the whole Patron vs Polytheism thing. But it has always struck me as odd that something as primal and mystic as druidism requires the practitioner to expressly direct their worship to a god or graven image. Gods can masquerade as other gods and the worship is given to them (I.E. Shar and Ibrandul). Deities can be worshiped through intermediaries, aspects, and avatars (Chauntea and the Earthmother, Uthgar and his Totems). Greater Deities, which the Elemental Lords and Silvanus are considered according to nj-pbem, are aware of anything that involves their portfolio a week into the past or the present, via Portfolio Sense.

What then is the argument that some superstitious fellow in a mudhut can't worship the one thing keeping him and his family alive, fire, and have his spells unknowingly provided by Kossuth? I understand why in FR clerics and druids worshiping Ideals don't work, but elements and druidism seem different. Ung'*click-click*Boo'too isn't worshiping some mutable concept like Goodness or Justice. He is bowing himself to the trees or fire or water, all of which have some inexorable connection to a being that can answer to those names and back him up.

Edit: To clarify my inquiry, we have multiple examples of mortals worshiping something and yet another thing actually receives the praise. If someone can worship a totem or image of a god's aspect and it works, what is to inhibit one of the Elemental Lords from operating through the elements, which are perhaps just as representative of them as any statue or given name? I guess that extends further to ask this: what exactly constitutes worship in the Forgotten Realms universe?

I'm not sure there's a definitive "why" available for that question. It's just a FR lore rule, because it is. You'd have to ask Ed Greenwood and friends.

I have a theory, though: druids can't worship elements because in the FR, standard magic comes from the Weave, and the Weave requires some force of will to interact with it in order to produce effects. "Elemental fire" doesn't have a mind, and can't shape the Weave.

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I have a theory, though: druids can't worship elements because in the FR, standard magic comes from the Weave, and the Weave requires some force of will to interact with it in order to produce effects. "Elemental fire" doesn't have a mind, and can't shape the Weave.

I understand what you're getting at, but I'm not saying that "Elemental fire" is receiving the praise and shaping the Weave. I'm positing that Kossuth could be worshiped through the worship of elemental fire, and shape the Weave.

Put it this way. If there is a War somewhere, anywhere on Toril, Tempus knows about it. War is his Portfolio. As best I can pin down, worship is engaging in an act in a deity's Portfolio with them in mind, if not directly, by proxy of something connected to them. So fighting a War, with even the slightest idea that there is some power connected to it that has found favor in you, could be considered worship. How then is this different than humans setting a huge bonfire and rejoicing in the marvels it provides them with? Fire is in Kossuth's portfolio, they are engaging in its use, and directing some sort of praise to its power/wonder/dread. You could say that to worship you have to know what you're directing the praise to, but like in the examples I presented, the case can be made that you can have no real idea at all, or even more, be completely unaware of the true source.

Perhaps it is something that Greenwood simply went with, but I believe it deserves to be questioned all the same.

Would Kossuth get anything out of that sort of indirect worship, though? In order for a deity to profit by the deity/follower relationship, doesn't the follower need to be actively and explicitly investing faith in the deity? Why would Kossuth (or whoever else) squander his power on people from whom he's not getting anything in return?

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Divine magic

Magic that originates from a spell-granting deity, usually through prayer, is divine in nature and is called the Power by the common folk. Clerics, druids, paladins, rangers and many prestige classes all derive their spells and spell-like abilities from a deity. A practitioner of the Power has no affinity with the Art, as their spells are planted in their minds directly by their patron deity, and they do not tap the Weave. Casting divine spells is more like an exclamation of faith that brings about a sensation appropriate to the patron deity to whom the faith was devoted.

From the FR wiki, the sentiment is mirrored in a few sourcebooks.

The way I have seen it is that they COULD worship an element, such as how Wood Elves will commonly worship Animal-like "aspects' of Rillifane Ralathil the Leaflord, but it would really have to be part of that deity's portfolio. Either way, Druids get their spells directly from their god, and anything can potentially become a god if it gets enough worship in FR. Kossuth and the primordial powers may work differently.

Well the Elemental Lords are all the ultimate manifestation of their elements, as I understand it. Biggest and baddest of the Elementals. They were there before the first deities, Selune and Shar, came into being. Kossuth supposedly wasn't cast down to Toril during the ToT according to Faiths and Pantheons, so it may well be that their worship doesn't depend on the same rules of faith and worship that Ao has set up for the gods.

That's one of the reasons I find that no elemental/nature worship dubious. They may not even by playing by the same rules other divine powers must, when it comes to worship. And it seems like it limits shamanism and druidism roleplay in unnecessary ways. You can worship a goddess in a pink tutu that may actually be Bane and get spells, but heaven forbid you be a druid and worship an element that is directly related to a divine power and get spells. You have to call it Kossuth or Grumbar, first, because they mysteriously won't answer to the encompassing titles of Fire or Earth.

Contrarily, I think they will, but not openly. Perhaps not even consciously. People who worshipped that sad old god of caves were worshipping Shar for a long time and never knew it, and she gained the benefit because she inherited the portfolio. You could handwave it and say that a shaman who worships the essence of fire is too ignorant to know about Kossuth, but the worship goes to Kossuth the holder of the Fire portfolio all the same.

Admittedly this falls apart when you go outside the elements to some of the other concepts. It is also has a somewhat chilling or disheartening effect on playing the shaman type because of the word I used above: ignorance.

Spirit Shamans of Rasheman get their spells from the Telthor, which are powerful spirits and not deities. These spells are considered divine.

... So how powerful does an entity need to be to grant spells? Could one grant spells to someone who doesn't follow them traditionally because of some hidden purpose or another? (Like trickery of an evil deity, inhabiting a concept, etc)

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/divine/divine ... ivineRanks

I'd hazard a guess to say this sums up the reason the primordial's themselves wouldn't give powers, since they would be something like an 'overlord' of their respective portfolio/element.

No, they're certainly divine powers. Faiths and Pantheons equates them to Greater Powers, along with nj-pbem. Even so, you don't need to expressly be a deity to grant spells or powers, see: Demon Princes, Lords of the Nine, the Hebdomad,. And they currently do anyway and have their own clerics and orders, etc. This isn't about if they can grant powers, we know they do that. This is about what they accept or are able to accept as worship.

Mercedes wrote:

Spirit Shamans of Rasheman get their spells from the Telthor, which are powerful spirits and not deities. These spells are considered divine.

... So how powerful does an entity need to be to grant spells? Could one grant spells to someone who doesn't follow them traditionally because of some hidden purpose or another? (Like trickery of an evil deity, inhabiting a concept, etc)

Derailing just briefly, but - source? I know about Telthors and Hathran land magic, but I don't recall Spirit Shaman showing up anywhere in Unapproachable East or elsewhere in FR sourcebooks (although we have some on Amia, but they need deities). The only Spirit Shamans I know are from Complete Divine and possibly OA (I forget).

Last edited by DireCorbie on Fri, Feb 21 2014, 22:45 PM, edited 1 time in total.

My Unapproachable East is at home right now, so I'll have to get back to you on that. I think I recall seeing it in there, somewhere around rune-scarred berserker, but I'm not sure.
Supposedly, spirit shaman used to be specific to Rashemen until they expanded the class (nevermind that, I misunderstood something), but they get their powers from the worship of spirits, which works as a sort of mutualistic relationship between the shaman and the spirit.

EDIT: I can't find them in the PDF, but I don't see why spirit shamans couldn't cooperate with telthor, so long as the shaman doesn't attempt to bring the telthor out of his or her territory.

So it's too far fetched to believe that the entities that have been around as long as Toril itself haven't attained more power than when they were first formed, despite being some of the few oldest being in/on Toril?

This is something that should be explained and enrichened in Amian lore articles. Until such a time as we get some, there's really no conclusive answer. The sources are unclear and not always consistent. It is possible to get spells without divine patronage in the Realms (see: druids and rangers of Eldreth Veluuthra), but generally it's an exception. Nonetheless, I would definitely say that a druid can worship concepts, locations or elements and gain powers, because 1) as Yoss said, they might come from deities without their knowledge, and 2) nothing says your divine caster must get all their spells from one god. Beast cults and many primitive tribes would certainly worship a group of powers and get spells from all of them.

The deities available are also more numerous than the ones in F&P. There are beast spirits for several animals given in Evermeet, and probably more exist. Surely, most large forests and other natural formations have some unnamed quasi-deity associated with them, able to grant spells with the sanction of the applicable greater deity. And yeah, the Rashemen culture is certainly designed to indicate that magic comes from local spirits, even if the mechanical side was not explicitly explained and one might argue the powers come from one of the three patron goddesses (Mystra, Chauntea and who else? Selûne?) worshiped in their culture.

All in all, the rules of FR divine magic should not become a point of technical debate. They are recommendations, and there are examples of skirting about them. I think the useful core of the rule is that divine magic, in the Realms, is associated with a religious tradition. What the exact relationship of that tradition to the planes of the divine is, is beside the point. It is meant to show that characters from some urban Faerûnian culture don't just become atheistic philosophers and choose to cast spells by virtue of some eco-activist ideology. It does not mean that primitive tribes with their unique, centuries old totemistic belief system could not get legitimate divine spells from some entity they may or may not recognize.

EDIT: I am not sure your question has a true premise, though. Why do you say druids can't worship elements? That is certainly possible, and should be possible. If your druid worships the elements, then the power probably comes from the associated gods. Even in the old days of strict and often incorrect lore statements, the example used to explain FR druidism was that a druid could (believe to) worship the earth like in other settings, but that the real target of worship was in fact Chauntea. Of course, the distinction is meaningless to the PCs who don't have access to this kind of metaphysical information. I don't see why you still could not do that, and the same goes for the elements. There's no Amian rule to the contrary, and if someone's said you can't, they were probably wrong.

IronAngel wrote:

EDIT: I am not sure your question has a true premise, though. Why do you say druids can't worship elements? ...There's no Amian rule to the contrary, and if someone's said you can't, they were probably wrong.

In the olden days it was explained to me by a few DMs that they couldn't worship the concept of the elements or nature and gain spells. Hence, my asking.

It's a somewhat obscure question, but that was probably misinformation.

If I were to make a generalisation based on the flavor of the setting, I'd say the fine line runs between idealizing an abstract concept (Greyhawk-priesthood) and worshiping a personified element, whether you recognize a particular god associated with it or not. The difference would then be between a religious/ritualistic and a secular/philosophical approach to the element. Certainly you do not need to know the name and mythology of Kossuth to worship the Great Fire, though. You just need to acknowledge its divinity and treat it as an object of worship.

Even that may be a bit too restrictive, though. That clerics don't get spells from ideas does not mean they could not feasibly worship, under some conditions, the name and substance of the idea without personal knowledge of the god behind it. Or a highly intellectual priest could perceive beyond the puerile myths and anthropomorphism of his religion and believe that his patron god is just a manifestation of a greater principle (which could actually be true, given that portfolios tend to shape the gods' personality and determine their purpose in the cosmos).

The rule just requires that there is in fact a god granting the spells, and that probably means the worshiper has to be more or less in line with the alignment and dogma of the god he actually serves (although the same gods take on different alignments and dogmas in different contexts, like Amanator being At'ar the Merciless or Chauntea being the Earthmother, with entirely different personalities).

If you really need a technical, rule-based solution to it, you could appeal to Heretic of the Faith and come up with a heresy that considers a particular set of elements as fundamental and divine, and gain spells from the Elemental Lords. But that's just a game rule designed specifically so as to make possible the intended religious diversity of the setting. You don't need to appeal to it to acknowledge that gods and worship really do manifest in many forms.

Honestly, I'd say the reason why is the canon reason why: the Elemental lords do not give a fig for the prime and mortals. These beings are the gods of elementals and their relative domains on the Elemental planes. Humanity (well mortals, period) to them is a bothersome pest that magically enslaves their peoples and trespasses on their space. Akadi, Grumbar, et all do not care what happens on the prime at all and have very little interest in the few misguided individuals that give them worship there. These people are largely held as unbalanced and possibly dangerous folk in the realms for being fanatics who worship alien beings who don't care about humanity and are liable to burn down your house or do some other destructive thing in the glory of an element.

Although they are associated with the stuff they are made of, they are not the divine representation of the elements themselves on the prime, but merely powers of some elemental races on the Elemental planes and that largely is where their cares end. The Elemental cults are strange people who for some reason have taken up fanatical devotion to alien beings to curry their favor. Beings which largely care for them about as much as I care about tofu.

Elements and Worship

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