AMIA ARCHIVE • View topic

This has been bugging me for a while now.

How serious it is, in FR, when you swear an oath to a faith and then forsake it for whatever reason?

What does it mean to swear a religious oath? Is it supposed to be easy to break it or are there implications when doing so?

I could be more specific, but I don't want to speak of one of my character's background here.

My understanding of this is that its extremely serious. An affront to your devotion should you break it. That's how serious it is. If its Drow, where Lloth takes a major hand in the affairs of her mortals, good luck to you!

Nah, not Lolth.

Generally, Faerun is a place, with a few exceptions, where any oath or promise is taken quite seriously. Things like "I owe you one" aren't just said out-of-hand, but actually mean that you owe someone a favor. If you make an oath to anyone, on anything, it's very serious, in general, and those who know about you breaking said oath are quite liable to look down on you for it.

Really, it depends on your alignment, IMHO.

How the DM chooses to implement a punishment, should a individual promise an oath or swear a religious oath and doesn't mean it, will obviously be up to the DM who handles it.

Regards,

Depends.

The Oath might mean nothing.

It might mean everything.

Just enjoy the mystery, would you, please?

Actually, it never happened at Amia. It is part of a background story pre-Amia.

I started this thread because I caught myself thinking about whether or not such an oath would be easily swore and just as easily broken. As in... within FR's culture, people would be terrified of making an oath and then breaking it, or just forsaking it.

Especially if it is something some... 100 years old.

Ugh.. I am not sure how to explain it. >.<

If you broke a devil's word... may Asmodeus have mercy on your soul.

Yossarin wrote:

Depends.

The Oath might mean nothing.

It might mean everything.

Just enjoy the mystery, would you, please?

This, some things really lose a lot of their charm and value once they are clearly defined.

I am not being able to explain it. I give up. >.<

But, arr, I understood all you guys' points.

I think the best answer I could give you is: It depends. >.>

On the type of oath, the person swearing it, the entity receiving it, etc, etc... I dunno, maybe Iron would be able to fig up something more concrete, but that's my point of view.

Transcendental Templar wrote:

I think the best answer I could give you is: It depends. >.>

On the type of oath, the person swearing it, the entity receiving it, etc, etc... I dunno, maybe Iron would be able to fig up something more concrete, but that's my point of view.

Oh, thanks! That makes sense.

Transcendental Templar wrote:

I think the best answer I could give you is: It depends. >.>

On the type of oath, the person swearing it, the entity receiving it, etc, etc... I dunno, maybe Iron would be able to fig up something more concrete, but that's my point of view.

Iron would do it in 4 pages worth if you get him excited.

Dont forget a Kolyarut, the type of Inevitable that punishes those who willingly break a oath or contract.

The prefered method of a Kolyarut to punish a oath breaker is to use invisibility, sneak up to the oath breaker, then kill them with Vampiric touch

Last edited by FA_Frey_XC on Tue, Mar 10 2009, 8:43 AM, edited 2 times in total.

Yossarin wrote:

Depends.

The Oath might mean nothing.

It might mean everything.

Just enjoy the mystery, would you, please?

That's what I said too. It's up to the DM's to tell ya what happens.

Galenson wrote:

Iron would do it in 4 pages worth if you get him excited.

Just mention that I mentioned alignment in this thread - that will likely do.

Regards,

Make the background devastating, and everyone is happy

Transcendental Templar wrote:

I think the best answer I could give you is: It depends. >.>

On the type of oath, the person swearing it, the entity receiving it, etc, etc... I dunno, maybe Iron would be able to fig up something more concrete, but that's my point of view.

That would be my opinion. Break a really powerful oath and yo may have a strong Lawful being come in to kick your hide (I don't think Inevitables are FR are they?). Break it to a god and you may end up decorating the Wall.

Inevitables may not be FR, but they're "Amia": I've used most all of them in mini events at one point or another. Just ask Khylaria about that one. Took me two and a half weeks of detective work to track her down as my Kolyarut.

Or anyone at the shrine when a Marut decided a Elf trying to go Baelnorn was breaking the natural order so she had to die.

Don't sound that Tough. True Seeing - Death Ward. Win. A drow female would have no trouble with a Kolyarut... ;)

We of course scale PnP things to Amia's level of power to make it more interesting.

Of course. You must excuse me, my arms ache and I'm not thinking straight because of it.

You can't really scale anything to stop a well built Mage without it getting crazy right? Darn Mages and their lichdom.

soundofastream wrote:

If its Drow, where Lloth takes a major hand in the affairs of her mortals, good luck to you!

Lolth actually cares very little for the affairs of "her" (emphasizing the irony of the possessive, not her gender) mortals, actually. So long as they pay her homage and thus add to her power she, for the most part, doesn't care.

Agreed, it really depends on the oath and the religion. For example, most Druids of Silvanus take their oaths VERY seriously, to the death even. Druids, like paladins, can fall pretty easy IMO. They may be neutral, but they have things they stand for and will die fighting for them like a Paladin would.

If you're running upon a case-by-case then you can always PM to appropriate DMs with "would it be better my character see punishment, or this is okay?" if you don't feel alright just posting the specific event and reasoning to the forums.

Overall, it's a lot of pick-and-choose on your own part and seeking IC imput. I know my cleric once made a pretty bad choice, and although it was all mental and emotions without true violent action, I was going to RP a serious reduction in their abilities. Then ICly a higher ranking cleric of same faith imparted some good wisdom; and I chose to RP a lesser penalty for both the IC of some repentence and "well, given the situation, it's not that wrong" and OOC imput to weigh the scales with.

If you're really unsure if there needs to be something, you have to go case-by-case...

The main reason why I asked was because people tend not to take things seriously at Amia, death and religion being one of them: the former giving the amount of times a character dies and is brought back to life; the latter, how people swap faiths quickly, or how they are quick to declare to be faithless or false.

I mean, everyone complains in the forums that death does not leave their characters shaken because it becomes some sort of common occurance, so, people go carelessly hunting tough spawns, or get into PvP.. you get the picture.

I know that, for instance, in a PnP game, breaking a religious oath could be quite serious because there is little people and the DM have a better control of the story. At Amia, we have hundreds of people and the DMs cannot accompany their PCs' story and actions closely, which might add to the mentality of.. "Oh, there will not be a consequence, so, there..."

My character, for instance, stopped worshiping a god to which he had sworn his faith the moment his lover died and his child disappeared (pre-Amia, of course). And even after he found the child (at Amia, all grown-up, mind), he did not went back to said worship because he was not welcomed in the "church" at Amia. He was kind of bitter about it all.

Some of the DMs know what I am talking about, I don't think I should elaborate more to the players even if it would help explaining what I am trying to say.

I was just confused because at the same time that it is said that the gods could not care less about a single worshiper (when Carter proposed something in the TtC forum a while ago concerning faithless/false PCs), it is also said that the gods watch them closely and if they sidetrack they are doomed.

Both statements could be true, and the latter could be something a priest/priestess says to their faithful to keep the worshipers because the worshipers would not know better.

Who would be checking on a religious oath? An entity? A priest? No-one at all?

I am not sure if I was able to explain better this time.

TormakSaber wrote:

Inevitables may not be FR, but they're "Amia": I've used most all of them in mini events at one point or another. Just ask Khylaria about that one. Took me two and a half weeks of detective work to track her down as my Kolyarut.

Or anyone at the shrine when a Marut decided a Elf trying to go Baelnorn was breaking the natural order so she had to die.

I specified that they're not FR because the OP specified FR rather than Amia.

Uhm.. Well, generally, 95% of Faerûnian people respect, revere, fear and/or worship 95% of the deities they know of. In various sources, it's specifically said that while clergies of opposed faiths may fight, undermine eachother's efforts and mock eachother, goodly folk may lynch a Cyricist and evil folk may despise and torment a charity-working monk of Ilmater, this doesn't extend to gods. You may be Lawful Good, but you don't insult or belittle Bane. You might be a sociopath, but you don't ridicule Tyr or treat him with indifference.

Typically (that is, almost always) when a promise is made to a god, be it personal and informal ("If I win this bet, I'll promise to offer 10% of my winnings on your altar for the next decade, Tymora!") or institutional and formal (like initiation oaths of many knightly orders), they're taken pretty damn seriously and effort is made to fulfill the promise. It doesn't have to be about honour, mere practicality and/or supersticion is enough: you really don't want to piss off entities who can ruin your whole life with a single thought.

The actual consequences depend, of course. Not something I care to share, really, because I want to reserve the DMs a right to a certain level of mystery and creative freedom. They're fairly irrelevant actually, because you've misunderstood the relation between the mortal and the divine if you attempt to calculate profit and risks in the first place. The ways of the gods are mysterious, and you can never know for sure whether they're paying special attention to you just now, or if they're even aware of you.

I don't see why we should attempt force or regulate consequences of such actions, because I don't think there's much point in sticking our noses into something that doesn't concern us. That is to say, you shouldn't take religious RP seriously because the DMs say so, but because it's good RP. If you choose to do bad RP instead, that's your loss. If I see such RP, I may react as the environment/clergy/deity, but I'm not very interested in how pathetic your RP is when I'm not looking.

IronAngel wrote:

Uhm.. Well, generally, 95% of Faerûnian people respect, revere, fear and/or worship 95% of the deities they know of. In various sources, it's specifically said that while clergies of opposed faiths may fight, undermine eachother's efforts and mock eachother, goodly folk may lynch a Cyricist and evil folk may despise and torment a charity-working monk of Ilmater, this doesn't extend to gods. You may be Lawful Good, but you don't insult or belittle Bane. You might be a sociopath, but you don't ridicule Tyr or treat him with indifference.

except on amia, it is A-ok to do so. people mock the gods or don't worship them outright. how I hate faithless, but I suppose the only way we could stop this is through IC actions. we could always require someone to have a deity or stay permently dead but I doubt that would fly well.

First, this topic is about Forgotten Realms, or at least that's what my answer concerned.

Second, even if we include Amia, my argument still stands: Amian PCs do not make up even 0,5% of the Faerûnian population (and that of nearby islands), let alone 5% which is the error margin I included.

Third, it's not A-OK to do it on Amia. It's legal, because we give you a lot of freedom to RP like you want. This is mostly a good thing. It does mean you're allowed to do many things that are utter bollocks, pathetic excuses of RP. The behaviour you described is one of such things, and definetely not OK on any level but that of legality.

I know, in the rest of the realms, relgion is taken far more seriously, a farmer for instance may pray to talos during a storm to not have lighting strike them, and a sailor may do the same to umberlee to protect him as he sails.

I was just making a comment about some of the things i have seen ocasionally. but are you saying that if you are on DM side and you see some one for example badmouthing talos, that guy would be struk by lighting? there isn't much one could do to change some charachters, though I try to. All of my charachters I make have one diety or another, some are polytheistic as is amareth she worships the Saladerine for the most part, others are monotheistic, like Lualyrr being a lolthlite who like others basicly belives that Lolth is the ultimate diety and the most powerful onne.

herkles wrote:

I was just making a comment about some of the things i have seen ocasionally. but are you saying that if you are on DM side and you see some one for example badmouthing talos, that guy would be struk by lighting?

The answer to your question can already be found in one of my above posts.

Mind that what you describe isn't the case on Amia, either. It's only so among a minority, that is, some of the PCs. Not NPCs. We all know how players RP on Amia, it's not a very interesting piece of information, and rather seems like cynical trolling. Not that I suggest you'd do it intentionally.

IronAngel wrote:

<snip>

Typically (that is, almost always) when a promise is made to a god, be it personal and informal ("If I win this bet, I'll promise to offer 10% of my winnings on your altar for the next decade, Tymora!") or institutional and formal (like initiation oaths of many knightly orders), they're taken pretty damn seriously and effort is made to fulfill the promise. It doesn't have to be about honour, mere practicality and/or supersticion is enough: you really don't want to piss off entities who can ruin your whole life with a single thought.

<snip>

This is what I was trying to know.

In a way, as it always happens to me, I am unable to measure the consequences because I cannot see/comprehend the whole. I have a bad, really, awfully bad sense of proportion, as a friend recently showed me about Daos' background story, written around two years ago.

Until he made me understand how serious or how impossible could be some of the things I wrote, I argued endlessly about how plausible it could be - and then I got embarassed and pissed off at myself for being so naive when I saw the truth. And pissed off at him too because he "should have told me earlier". ^^;

I don't think I am the best roleplayer there is (nor am I asking if I am through this thread), but I don't want to do roleplay that seems alright and in the end is something that's impossible, or that's being done wrong. I think it's part of my perfeccionist nature.

So, I was trying to understand how serious such an oath could be, to RP my character with a real fear of the consequences.

I will do better this time.

To go off on a tangent: I guess the reverance for such oaths stems more from tradition than personal experience. It's not as if 99,9% of normal people have any experience of interacting directly with the divine, particularly in regards to breaking oaths. But they're generally taught that gods are all-powerful, all-knowing and present in the world, and that's reason enough to fear and respect them.

Of course you're not always able to fulfill every little promise you make to a god or another, but that's not to say failure is taken lightly. It's not the most important thing in life to most people, but you don't swear oaths and break them for fun. It always depends on the context, of course.

In the same vein, I believe certain fey can go into a crux or dwindle if they break an oath or fail to keep a promise. I'd be more certain of that, but it seems a good deal of my PDF books are no more. Maybe Grave or someone can help back me up on this?

BlackDahlya wrote:

<snip>

So, I was trying to understand how serious such an oath could be, to RP my character with a real fear of the consequences.

I will do better this time.<snip>

Well there is reasonable leeway of having things done wrong while learning. So it's not like anyone is going to come out and smite your character for doing the "impossible" just because you didn't know. [Well, they shouldn't

]

For instance: I once misinterpreted how summoning undead could work as well as talking to dead. Soon as a player mentioned it to me, I asked a DM, and discovered it'd be a lot easier to drop the character because of how badly I misconstrued some things ^^ But I wasn't told I was going to get de-leveled or penalized in any way for something that was a breech of rules; I just simply didn't realize and worked to solve it.

Now, then there is also my current follower of Salandra who; in their PC story, uses Infliction Wounds twice. Which has been tosses to me by a reader that this really shouldn't be possible. But I've justified both in background and in use IC when it happens and considering it's up and available for anyone to see, if a DM doesn't like it, I'll let them inform me that my character should probably be smited

I'm just careful about how it works now after initially learning that I was apparently playing certain healing skills like a "chosen soul" would [and my character is -not- that]. So I'm just Rolling with the Punches on knowing in the future to alter how I justify it. Knowing it's pushing a limit just means I have to equal things out by consiquence as well.

IronAngel wrote:

Of course you're not always able to fulfill every little promise you make to a god or another, but that's not to say failure is taken lightly. It's not the most important thing in life to most people, but you don't swear oaths and break them for fun. It always depends on the context, of course.

Agreed.

Some of those can be justified, but that does not necessarily mean it will be accepted.

I am feeling much better now. :P

Forgotten Realms and Religious Oaths

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